01-27-2008 11:30am Korosten

Well, we are glad to have had the weekend to figure out what is going on, to sleep in, and to spend some time talking and in prayer. At the moment we are going from sad or angry one moment to hopeful and excited the next. We will always see Sasha as a daughter of our hearts and are encouraged that there may still be some things we can do to stay in contact with her and to try to build a relationship with the director so that she and so many others might some day find a home.

For now though, we must continue on the path that God has brought us here for… to bring a child into our family. We will be meeting up with our regional facilitator (Natalia) in the morning at 8am and will be signing paperwork to officially cancel the adoption. After a few other errands we will return to Kiev and Oleg (the “main facilitator” that stays in Kiev a lot of the time) will arrange another appointment for us with the SDA. Please pray that this can be made quickly so that we will not have to spend a long time in Kiev before we travel to the new region.

We are excited to return to Kiev, though, for several reasons. One is that this time we will not be renting an apartment and out on our own, but instead we will be staying in the home of a Christian couple that a friend from the Down syndrome support group Downsyn.com has hooked us up with. The couple allows people to stay with them sort of as a bed and breakfast and has been gracious to accept the amount we would have paid for the apartment we were in previously. We look forward to meeting them on Monday evening. In the midst of getting connected with them we were also put in contact with a woman that is a missionary in Kiev and I spoke with her last night. Depending on the length of our stay in Kiev we will try to meet up with Julie and her husband as well.

Some other special people are now in the capital city- Joy and her husband, also adopting a child (a Sasha even, but theirs is a boy) with Down syndrome through the Reece’s Rainbow group and even using Team Oleg as facilitators. I hope to get to at least talk with them if not meet up with them while we are there. Sheila will be arriving soon for her appointment on Tuesday as well. It looks like our trip back to Kiev might have us meet several people that we know very well through e-mail and online interaction, but we’ve never met face to face.

A few unimportant things that have happened lately
-This morning Mike got out of the shower and said that he didn’t think I would want to take a shower today. Why? Because it was BROWN. Not just a little tinged, but running mucky muddy water. EW. He’s right- my hair may be a little overdue for a washing, and I felt a bit scummy since I hadn’t taken a shower on our day of relaxing yesterday, but I was not about to take a shower in mud- or whatever that was. Luckily, about 45 minutes later we tried it again and it ran clear. We rinsed out the shower and waited a little longer- still clear. So I took my VERY QUICK shower and got out with clear water still. We will be brushing our teeth with bottled water today though!

- A few days ago I plugged in my hair dryer to the wrong conversion plug and it couldn’t handle the wattage and wimped out. Bye bye (paka) converter. So the next day Mike looked at the wattage on the second one we brought and agreed it could handle it. He tried it. It worked. Today I took a shower and came out to plug it in and nothing. Nyet. Not happening. The hairdryer is fried. So I will have a cold head today or just be hanging out inside until my hair dries. I’m thankful for the warm hat I brought!

-Speaking of warm clothes, for those of you wondering we have both been plenty warm on this trip. We are glad for the warm jackets we brought as well as the hats and gloves. We’ve also used all of our sweaters, long underwear, etc. and have been glad we have them. The hand/foot warmers have been wonderful and Natalia was glad to see them after we got back from our lovely trip when we ran out of gas on Thursday. They don’t have hand warmers in Ukraine. I guess I know who gets any extras we have at the end of our trip! Along with ear plugs- weird, but they don’t sell them here. And hand sanitizer. I won’t have to worry about packing any of those things on our way home!