SDA Appointment-Part 1 & Part 2

Part 1
Today was the day we had anticipated so long. In typical Ukraine fashion, nothing went as we had planned in our minds. Thankfully, we are at peace knowing God is in control and not us, and that is a good place. At 10:20 Valentin came to our apartment and tells us Jim & Teresa are in the car downstairs. Jim & Teresa are from Colorado also. We have never met them in person, but we have talked via email. You can click on the link to their blog to see what they are up to on the bottom left. So we run down the stairs Ukrainian style (they walk, run, climb stairs at warp speed, and I am a fast walker normally, but they are amazing) in our boots, coats, etc. We get to the van. Sergey is driving, Valentin in the passenger, so Jim and I squish in on each side of Jim & Teresa in a seat made for three-our first meeting in person, and we are already close friends, literally! Sergey speeds over to the SDA. I'm thinking we are late since we are running and speeding. We get to the SDA and see the infamous black iron gate. We stand and wait there about 20 minutes. Valentin takes our picture by the gate and "the door." Then he says we can go in the door. So we stand in the stairwell for another 20 minutes. People are coming and going. An older couple came in, and she would not stop staring at me. But since I am now trained in Ukrainian etiquette, I refuse to smile at her. The appointment list is posted in the stairwell. It looks like two appointments every hour from 9:00-5:00 with an hour lunch. There are four appointments scheduled for 3:00. Ours is at 11:00. At 11:20 we are called up the stairs. We go into a room with three women. One is talking loudly on the phone. A very pretty woman introduces herself to us. I can barely hear because this lady is talking on the phone so loud. She asks the expected, why we want to adopt, what are our jobs. She didn't seem to pay much attention to Jim's short answers. She didn't smile and barely looked us in the eyes. We tell her we want to request Sasha and Vasya. They do not have any information on this, even though we sent the letter for Sasha about a month ago. Vasya's letter we hand carried. We give her Sasha's full name and birthdate and the address of his orphanage. She goes out of the room and comes back with some notebooks and starts flipping through them. Out comes the page for Sasha and soon Vasya. We know Sasha has a 13-year-old sister who has been adopted. It turns out she is actually in foster care, which may make it hard to adopt Sasha. Then we hear about Vasya. We were told he has no siblings. We find out he has a 14-year-old brother who is missing. Apparently the police searched for him-maybe when Vasya came to the orphanage???-but could not find him. If he is still missing, there is a good chance we can adopt Vasya. She tries to call their orphanage and get more information. She can't get through, and Valentin asks if we have their phone #. We start looking through all of our paperwork and find Natasha's cell phone #. Valentin calls on his cell, then hands the phone to her. No new information. We will have to go to their region to find out for certain if the boys are available. We then inquire if there are any girls available in that region. She starts flipping through books and occasionally pulls out a page. This takes awhile. Eventually she finds five files. We have her call the orphanages for three of them, and for different reasons they are out of the picture. We ask to call about another girl. She tries to phone, but can't get a hold of anyone. She thinks it is their lunch. At this point our hour appointment has gone 1 hr 25 min. She says she will call later today, and maybe find some more files for us of girls. We tell her we definitely want the referrals for both boys. We are supposed to go back to the SDA this afternoon to hear about a girl. We come back to our apartment and call Austin & Tatum with the current news before they leave for school. Then we go to McDonald's for lunch.

Part 2
The idea was to send Part 1 early this afternoon, but just when I was finishing up Valentin calls and says we need to make a slow walk to the SDA. Since we now only do a fast walk, we wait 15 minutes, then take off. It is starting to get dark outside. We get to the SDA door and call Valentin. Five minutes later he walks up and tells us we will be shown the files of two other girls as the other one she called about is not available. We go into the stairway and wait with about 15 other people. Many of them are waiting for referrals to go to the region as they hand these out between 5:00-6:00. We are called back in by the same social worker and see the two girls files. We choose to take a referral for a 12 1/2 year old girl. We leave the room and realize we don't even know her name, that is how fast the decision making is going. So we pop our heads back in to get her name, then run down the stairs. Just like that we have requested three children. This is when our hearts run ahead of our minds. We had decided the day before our appointment instead of two we would go for three. At this point it is still all so up in the air it could be zero, one, two or three. Tomorrow we pick up our referrals and hop on the overnight train to Kherson. Hopefully we will meet the girl on Friday. Otherwise we will wait out the weekend before we can start the process of seeing who truly is available.

We had talked about meeting Jim & Teresa for dinner now that we have become "close" friends on the five minute cab ride to the SDA. So we ask Valentin to drive us over to their apartment. We call and say we will be there in two minutes. They are a little off the beaten path, and Valentin doesn't know of any restaurants. He calls a friend and asks if a Georgian restaurant sounds good-as in Georgia who Russia recently invaded. Sounds good. Off we go speed walking. It is obvious Valentin is ready to go home. It has been a long crazy day as Jim & Teresa had a SDA appointment in between our two with some interesting kinks to work out. But he is patient and smiling as we Americans try to keep up. We get to the restaurant, and no one speaks English. So he sits down and explains all the items on the menu. We have been up since 2:30 a.m. from jet lag and excitement about our appointment. Jim & Teresa had just gotten in this morning on the overnight train. We all give him blank stares as he reads us the five page menu. Finally we order cheese bread pizza, two salads, and Jim J. gets bread with a very wiggly egg on it. Valentin orders, writes down our apartment address so we can call a cab and leaves. We spent 2+ hours visiting with Jim & Teresa. Now we really are close friends! We called a cab and got impatient and started walking (against Valentin's instructions). We found a cab, and they wanted to rip us off. Jim & Teresa say they can navigate the subway for 2 grivnas each. They get us to Independence Square. We all hug, they get on the subway back. We ride the world's longest escalator and speed walk up our hill. It is good to be home.

We really felt everyone's prayers today. We were nervous, of course, but at the same time we were able to make calm, quick decisions-which is not like us at all. It is exciting to totally be at God's mercy, but ask me in a couple weeks if I still feel that way ;) Sorry so long, but it was an eventful day. Much more to come....please keep praying for us. Your comments and emails have been so encouraging.