Last SB Visit and 2 Days in Kiev

Kari:

Sorry for not posting in so long. We still do not have internet access, and the few times we have gone to the internet café we spend reading emails and blog comments. Here is a summary of the last few days:



Friday, January 2, 2009

Today we went to visit the SB kids for the last time. We got there about 11:00, and they were watching TV. Today we took some more of the Barretts’ goodies, balls and ball pump and jump ropes. We played soccer and keep away with the balls inside and jumped rope. Natasha and Raisa were stuck to Jim’s side.

The hard part was Vasya barely interacted with us. We tried to talk to him and get him to engage, but he refused. I don’t know if we did the right thing. Is it better for him to think he was not chosen between him and Sasha or to know we tried everything we could to adopt him, but the laws of Ukraine will not allow it for now? I am glad Jim gets to go back and spend more time with him, and maybe he will feel like talking about it later. We spent our usual two hours with them and then said our final goodbyes. Natasha started crying as we left. I wonder if we will ever see any of these kids again. Then we head back to Kherson. Oksana calls Ashley and asks if she wants to go to lunch with us. She says no, she is still tired from staying up all night on New Year’s Eve. I wish I could blog that all of our visits with her have been smooth sailing, but the fact is she is an almost-13-year-old girl who is having a hard time thinking about leaving her dorm-room style life that does allow a lot of freedom. You can only sit around in a room and talk through a translator for so long, and our visits without Oksana are usually fine, but the language barrier is still huge. After two recent adoptions that fell through on the way to the airport and at the airport, I will believe that Ashley is our daughter when I see her get off the plane in Colorado with Jim. I hope she comes home with us. Jim and I both see incredible potential in this young lady and love her very much, but it isn’t easy adopting a child of this age, and we also foresee a lot of rocky times ahead. We decide to stop by her orphanage for a final quick visit. She comes out of her room and meets us. We ask if Felix and Heidi’s Z&R are there today. We walk down to their room and briefly talk to them and take a photo for Felix and Heidi. We cannot wait for the day when they bring these two girls back to Colorado. Please pray for this as they have already been waiting a year for the girls’ paperwork and have at least another year to go. Both of these young ladies want to be adopted. Then we walk back to Ashley’s room. Austin and Tatum tell her they are looking forward to seeing her when she gets to Colorado. I look her in the eyes and say, “You will do great in America. I know it.” Then we all hug and say goodbye, hopefully only for a couple weeks. We do a little transferring of luggage to the Bible House where Jim will stay when he returns to Kherson because they have INTERNET! Then we walk to Zepplins for a long dinner. We head to the train station around 6:15. We are on an earlier train back to Kiev that Oksana says is not as nice, so we are prepared this time for the shake-n-bake. We get on, and it looks like the last train, so that is good. It is freezing in the train. We end up falling asleep with our winter coats on and our blankets. I am really glad we packed a blanket for each of us, we use them every single night.



Saturday, January 3, 2009

We get into Kiev at 6:45 a.m. Sergey is waiting for us. We head to our apartment, which is across the street from our first one. It is not ready yet because the land lady thought today was the 2nd. It won’t be ready until 9:30 a.m. So guess where we hung out-yes, good ol’ McDonald’s. Until you have come to Ukraine, you just won’t understand why we Americans end up eating at McDonald’s a handful of times. After awhile, it is just good to have something familiar, and they speaka our language. Big Mac is universal. We are all tired and need a shower, and finally our place is ready. After we get cleaned up, we head down to Andriyivsky Uzviz to buy some souvenirs. We show Austin & Tatum the famous SDA gate. It is so cold today. We are all freezing. We look around for a little while, then just stop at one stand and this lucky guy makes the sale of the day because we buy almost everything at his shop just to go home and get out of the cold. He has to take his gloves off to help us round everything up, and his hands are red and shaking, but of course he tells us over and over, “It’s no problem.” We would have liked to spend a little more time picking things out, but it is too cold. We came home and warmed up awhile, then went back to the familiar, TGI Fridays. We have gotten used to two hour late lunch/early dinners here. Then we headed back down Khreschatyk Street enjoying the lights and santas. There are so many people now in Independence Square for the holidays. There are giant crowds everywhere. We see santas smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, boxing-there has to be at least 50 santas in Independence Square all in fancy costumes. I know I have said it before, but it has been fun being here over the holidays and seeing how they celebrate. They have two Christmases (December 25 and January 7) and two New Year’s (January 1 and January 14). Then we head home and call it an early night.




Sunday, January 4, 2009

Today we are going to church with some Campus Crusade for Christ staff, Eric & Kara. We decide we can walk there, but we make a wrong turn and realize we will be about 15 min late. We walk along the Dnipro River. It is very cold again today, but we are bundled up better after yesterday. After 50 minutes we get to church, and Kara is waiting out front for us. We head in. This is a large church that meets in a theater. They have headsets with an English translation for the sermon. We recognized a lot of the songs and enjoyed worshipping again with our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. We have been to four different churches in Ukraine, and it has been a great encouragement to us each week. I was sad the last Sunday at RMCC thinking how much I would miss it, but we have been able to go to church every Sunday here so far. After the service we meet some other Crusade staff, Oleg & Audra. We all go to lunch together at a Ukrainian cafeteria, and they help us order our food. I am almost ashamed to admit this is the first time I had borscht. Jim set our bag down to pay for our food, and forgot it while we ate. Afterward, we asked someone for it, and they asked him to describe it, what was in it, and asked to see his passport! They only looked to see if he had one, then they went and got it. They asked him to make sure everything was there. The bible and welcome packet from the church were there, but Jim and Austin's gloves were gone, as was Austin's stocking cap. So we did some shopping later to replace the gloves. It was wonderful to hear a small part of these missionaries’ stories. I admire them for leaving everything familiar to them, their friends and families, language and culture, to serve God in faraway parts of the world. Eric & Kara invited us to dinner tomorrow, so I am looking forward to hearing more about their ministry. An interesting thing here is that everyone is concerned about Russia turning the gas off. Apparently it could happen in a couple weeks. I hope Jim is back by then as they are expecting it to get even colder here, and many people will not have heat if the gas gets turned off. Then we decide to do some siteseeing. Oleg told us to visit the water museum. We take a cab back to Independence Square because we are a little turned around when we leave the restaurant and forgot to ask them exactly where we were on the map. From there we walk up to Khreshchaty Park and see the arch in honour of the reunion of Ukraine with Russia. Then we go to the overlook of the Dnipro. We walk along the river and cross the footbridge where the tradition is for newlyweds to put a padlock on the bridge. We keep walking and cannot find the museum. So Jim pulls out his Russian and asks a lady “vada muzyey.” He is pretty proud that she tells him where it is, but we point out that she immediately started talking to him in English, so it must have been fairly obvious to her that he was an American attempting Russian. We find the museum, and there is a line. Soon a pattern emerges. The door opens every 10 minutes and lets about 15 people in. We calculate we are at least 30 minutes away at this time and have been waiting 20 minutes already, but we are determined. It is so cold. We huddle together and jump up and down. There are large crowds of people walking around at all times of day here, and they don’t seem too affected by the weather, so we can do it. We finally make it to the door. I get in, then two people cut in front of us in line, and the lady tries to shut the door. So I step back outside and tell her I am with them. At least we are in the overhang now and out of the wind. We can make 10 more minutes. When we go in, the guide starts the tour in Russian. I saw on the sign they also have English tours, so I ask him if they have an English guidebook. He says no. Then a man in our group says, “I will translate for you.” We say, “Great!” We go to the first stop, and he starts quietly translating for us. The guide gets upset and says he is bothering him with his translation, and we need to go back upstairs and wait for an English guide. I guess now he decides we can have one if we are bothering him. We thank our translator and head back up the stairs. Soon another guide comes up and says she will give us a tour. She is very nice and speaks good English. So we get our own tour through the water museum. It is very interesting about how they clean the water and telling how to conserve water. They obviously need these lessons in Ukraine as the water is unsafe to drink, and almost every faucet we have encountered leaks constantly. After the tour we walk back to Independence Square and decide to go eat at……….you guessed it……McDonald’s. I know, we are pathetic, but it is cheap, and we know what we are eating. Then we head back to the underground mall because we saw a gelato shop, and Austin and Tatum get some delicious gelato. Like I said, we eat really good now that they are here. Then we buy some water and head home, and here I am typing this post. Jim is going to run over to the internet café, post the blog real quick and download our emails. Tomorrow we have to go to the consulate’s office so I can sign a paper saying I am aware of Ashley and Joshua’s medical conditions and still willing to adopt them. Austin, Tatum and I are flying home on the 6th. We already have a ride home from the airport-thanks, Michele! We will have our airport homecoming when Jim, Ashley and Joshua arrive home, and we will post that when we know the date/time. We have been told our internet is not working at our home in Colorado either-argh! Jim is the techno geek. I hope I can fix it. You don’t realize how addicted you are to the internet until you don’t have it for weeks! We are looking forward to coming home. I wish we could come home all together, the six of us, but it is too hard at this time of year for all of us to be away from home for six weeks.