Alive and well

Even if I DIDN'T blog for one day! :)

So-- yesterday started off busy and stayed busy all day.  We were able to meet one of the other RR facilitators, Serge, for coffee in the morning and had some great discussions and a good time getting to know each other a bit.  On Saturday we will visit a few orphanages nearby and one of his team members will go with us.

After meeting Serge, we walked out to McDonald's to get some lunch for the Lutz family and ourselves then went back to their apartment to hang out with them and their kiddos.  They just adopted three little ones with Ds, ages 3.5, 3.5 and a BRAND NEW 6-- it was her birthday!

We only had a little time before running down to the SDA for our appointment which of course didn't take much time at all... More time waiting than doing anything :).  After the SDA we walked and made a phone call and ended up meeting up with Charissa Browning and her little son Justice and Melissa Lorenz with her new little Liza for dinner.

Then... we went back to the Lutz' to say GOODBYE!  They are headed home TOMORROW!!  So excited for them to be able to start life as a family with all their little ones home!

We didn't get back to the B&B until about 10:30!

Then this morning we got up and had breakfast, but then we came back upstairs and CRASHED.  I didn't sleep well last night so we both went back to sleep for a while.  Mike woke me up and said we needed to eat lunch and be ready to meet Nadya for more of the paper chase... so we got it togeher and headed out for food.

Lunch was disgusting.  I doubt it's somewhere anyone else would try to eat at since it's well outside the main area of the city- so no worries.  But let's just say it wasn't worth trying.  So we went next door to the supermarket and bought drinks and a bar of white chocolate.  That solves all troubles!

We went for a walk up Andriivsky Street, which is known for its roadside stands all up and down it and it ends at the SDA.  It's a STEEP hill and quite a walk to get there, but worth the effort.  We got a call from Nadya while out walking, so we met her at the notary's office and signed another petition there then brought it to the SDA.  There, we did the hurry up and wait game a little more, and at about 4pm we were the first of the day to receive our referrals.  Our first referral ended up being the ONLY referral that was given that day at all.  See... God HAS been working for us in that area-- it just FEELS like everything is going S-L-O-W-L-Y!

After the SDA, we had no plans for a while, so we walked with Nadya as she headed for the US Consulate/Embassy to meet the Lutz family and get them to sign something.  She took us by way of China and we teased her that she could play "lose the Americans" and we would have had NO idea where we were!  She brought us to the edge of this cliff and said "see out there..." and we said NO.  Because there's about 20 feet visibility today with HEAVY fog ALL DAY LONG.  She said, "well, you see, you WOULD see this bald mountain and beautiful homes and..."  Really, she could have told us there were trolls in the bushes and unicorns dancing through the hills, because we could see NOTHING.  Another day maybe ;).  She gave us directions how to get back to where we were meeting people for dinner and sent us on our way on the Metro.

We met up tonight for supper with Melissa Lorenz and Liza again, and also with Mel Dellanos and her new little Timothy and Cathy and Tully Bachman with their son Evan and their new daughter Marina.  We had a great time getting to know everyone!

Finally back to the B&B and then we started a different chase, trying to get a meeting set up for tomorrow and a translator for it, and finding out whether it will work with our adoption meetings that are already in place.

It all worked out!

Please pray that the meeting will go well.  It's not something I can openly talk about (yet) but is something we're really looking forward to and that *could* have an impact on some things here in UA.

So... tomorrow we'll be leaving the B&B at 7:15 to head out via Metro to meet Nadya then on to the inspector's office and then over to Wesley's orphanage.  We'll be doing the morning fairly quickly to make it back downtown in time for the meeting.  After that... no plans for the rest of the day!

As far as an update on Aleksa's stuff goes-- we are just waiting for news.  There was a small issue with paperwork- the orphanage added a diagnosis to the medical at the last minute so the inspector had to change his paperwork to match it.  It was all submitted on Monday and the changes were supposed to be submitted on Tuesday.  Other than that, we're just waiting on a court date for her.

It LOOKS like... we may be able to KEEP our original tickets and fly home on November 27th!  I have confirmed with the US Embassy that I'll be presenting on the 26th about special needs adoption, and we hope to have court for Wesley on the same day if possible.  They will arrange court around the Embassy, time-wise.  We are hoping to have court for Aleksa before then as well.  It's possible that they will want to have 2 hearings for court for Aleksa, since it's the first adoption ever to take place in that orphanage and in that area at all.

Ok, off to bed, tomorrow's going to be an early morning!  THANK YOU for your continued prayers for the adoptions and for our kids at home (I have updates on them I'll post soon too!) and for our meeting tomorrow :)