Slowly catching up on my blog.

With 8 kids off to school and the babies still asleep, I decided to sit down and quickly add more to our blog. My kids look at the blog often and have asked me to add more pictures so that they can show their friends. I know for Elijah and Claudia this has been an awesome experience one that I pray will encourage them when older to do ministry work for children. At this point in our blog we have arrived at our children's city. We went to our new apartment, dropped off our luggage and went to the 2 orphanages where we met the orphanage doctor and they reviewed their medical records with us. The staff was then called to bring the children. The first one we saw was Nicholas (Danylo). He was tiny and so adorable (the nurse was with him). Here he was in person. I can tell you there was not one dry eye in that room. I could not stop looking at him. The staff then gave their input on his feeding and activity. After they left with Nicholas, Oksana(Annie) came in with another staff member. She looked at us and Steven reached out to hold her. She sat on Steven's lap and we could not stop smiling. We did not take any pictures so as not to stress them on the first day. We were told to come visit in the morning everyday 10-11am. We could not wait. We were then off to the second orphanage to meet Noah (Jack).
This was a 30 minute drive and again we sat with a doctor who told us about Noah. We were very welcomed there. Everyone there was so happy since it had only been hours before that his traveling to the institution had been stopped. Many smiled as they recounted the strory through the translator. Noah then came in with a staff member who also told us his developmental milestones. Noah watched us but when we approached him he was scared and scooted on his bottom backwards away from us towards the staff menber. He was 4 so his behavior was very appropiate. We would see him everyday and slowly he would come to know us. We were so happy to see him and it was okay to not get it in return.

In Kiev

After our SDA appointment we waited in this very nice apartment. At this point we were either going on the night train to our children's city or we would leave in the morning. It was about 3pm now so we rested in our apartment until we heard from our facilitator. As soon as the fax arrived to the SDA giving us an "entry pass", Yulia called us and told us they were going to get our night train passes to go to Dnepropetrovsk. At 10pm we were picked by our driver and brought to the train station. It was 11pm when we departed and we arrived at 7am. I wish I had pictures of the inside cabin. It had 2 bunk beds on each side and a small table with a flower, bottled water, and some wafers. It had a large window with a shade. The cabin was approx 8' by 8' in size. The 4 of us were tired so I think we all slept at least 5 hours. The ride was smooth, but when it would come to a stop we would wake up. People were going to work in the morning we could see other people with their lunch boxes also waiting to get on the train. We felt safe on the train. In the morning they served black coffee/tea for 25 cents. When we got off the train our new driver and facilitator were waiting for us. They took us to our new apartment.

Here we are in Kiev- waiting for our SDA appointment.

We were very tired by this point. We had been traveling for over 17 hours and had not slept for a day. We arrived just in time for our scheduled August 3rd appointment. Thank you God. This statue is a from a movie that was filmed here. We were told the name and forgot to write it down. If anyone knows please leave the name on the comments. The SDA appointment was very basic. Yulia translated for us and the lady at the SDA pulled our kids files out and read their history and explained why their parents had chosen to not take them home after birth. Once the parents were given the diagnosis of down syndrome the parents decided that it was not a commitment they could take. They had wanted them to be adopted and had agreed to name change. This was a very emotional time...I think seeing their files in front of us with their 2x2 picture made this very real. These children have no family. Once we accepted the official referral that is when the phone calls where made to the directors of the orphanages in order to give us permission to enter.