APPOINTMENT RESULT!!

Annie Jane sure is a funny name for a BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's right I said BOY!!!!!!! We have a beautiful 4 year old precious boy. This morning was long and tedious. When we arrived at the adoption center we had to wait 2.5 hours outside the office. ( Ukrainians don't have the same time urgencies that Americans do) We finally got in and the process began again. Before I ( Eric ) could even sit down I saw the boy we were going to adopt. His picture was laying on the desk with several other pictures. I made a comment that he was cute and I never looked back. Even going through the other profiles I still had my eyes on this little boy. He reminded me so much of our other son Brandon. His smile lit up the picture and it looked like he was very happy. After going through the process we looked at this boy along with two other profiles. We were not sure if this boy along with the other profiles were available to adopt or not so our facilitator was going to make some calls. We took a two hour lunch break in which I was a nervous wreck because all I could think about was this boy and how precious his smile was. After eating lunch we met with our facilitator in which she told us that this 4 year old boy was in fact available and we could not hold back our grins. We are so excited about this opportunity and we truly believe God had this child picked out for us. Miracles happen everyday and it is SO AWESOME TO EXPERIENCE THIS. Our prayers all along have been that God would give us BOTH a peace about the same child and they were answered through the blessings of this 4 year old boy. We know all of you have been praying for us and we have felt your prayers. Satan was truly on the attack last night and this morning so we appreciate so much all of your prayers and support. We could not have gotten through this far without it. Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts. We get to meet our precious new son on Monday morning. He lives close to Odessa near the Black Sea so we will take an overnight train Sunday night.

SECOND APPOINTMENT

We just got news from our fascilitator that our second appointment is tomorrow (Friday) at 9:00am our time. (1:00am US east coast) Please pray for us on this very important day. This will probably be our very last chance to choose a child. Please pray that God will give us clear hearts and minds for this appointment. We truly appreciate all your support and prayers. Thank you so much.

Fun in Kiev

After leaving the internet cafe this morning, we decided to be very brave and tour the city. We asked the gentleman running the cafe where we were on the map. We plotted from that point and started our journey. There are no street signs here, they are on the buildings in small Ukrainian letters so it made it very difficult to plot our way. We did finally make it to the central location where all of the beautiful monuments are. Our first sight was of a statue of a famous poet and spiritual leader. It was located in a big park. After this sight we walked past the opera house. Wow what a huge building. We then found an Uno's Pizza ( Again we are big chickens, playing it safe with the food). Boy that large pizza with ham and black olives sure did taste good and for dessert chocolate mousse. We then proceeded down four blocks to the biggest outdoor flea market. We spent a couple of hours here looking at pictures, nestling dolls, hats, bags, and all types of beautiful handmade nick nacks. During our shopping we saw St. Andrews church. It was blue with gold domes on the top of it. We then went back through a big center square where there was a monument of their great leader on a horse and two beautiful churches. Our last stop was a church that was built in 1037!!! It was a fun day with lots of things to see. We are hoping to get our exact day from our facilitator tonight for our second appointment. Please pray that God will start now to prepare our hearts for this important decision Karen and I have to make. Karen's note: There are no parking lots here, everyone just pulls up on the sidewalks with no warning. Eric was standing on the street corner trying to read a Russian sign when a bus pulled up on the curb to park, missing Eric by millimeters!!! Also- another funny note- another American couple that is here went to a restaurant to have lunch. She was thrilled to see a cheeseburger on the menu. After she ordered and took her first bite, she cracked up hysterically. It was literally a "cheese" burger! A block of cheese coated with breading! HA HA

ANOTHER DATE!!!!!

Praise the Lord!!!!!! We received another date!!! Our facilitator (Lesya) was at the adoption center until 8:30pm last night. We actually had a letter printed to us stating that we would have to go home and come back another time. In terms our application WAS rejected for a second appointment. Lesya is such a blessing to us. She really has worked hard for us during this time. She waited hours outside the director's office refusing to have NO as the answer. We believe that God was with her and the director's heart last night during this decision. Eighteen other couples received the same rejection letter as we did. Unfortunately the director refused to give these couples a second appointment,. What a miracle it is to be able to have a second appointment. We believe God said no the first time because our child was not yet available. Karen and I feel very confident that this second appointment will be the one. We are so excited about this opportunity and we feel like we have been given a second life. The second appointment has not yet been set but we've been told that it will either be Friday, Saturday, or Monday at the latest (Remember the office was supposed to close this Saturday, April 1st, but they are making a special exception for us-I don't know why). God makes miracles everyday and we believe this is a true miracle. We were so close to coming home without a child just yesterday. To add to Lesya's plate, her grandmother died yesterday unexpectedly. Even under all this stress and sadness of losing her grandmother she stayed at the adoption office all day to fight for our appointment. Please keep Lesya and her family in your prayers during this difficult time. We will find out for sure tonight when our day will be.

The day after the appointment

Today was very stressful. We still do not know if we will get a second appointment or not. We have talked to both our facilitator and our agency and can't seem to get a direct answer on our situation. We are trying to get another appointment for either Thursday or Friday but it doesn't look good right now. We have been told that other families have been waiting 2 weeks for a second referral so they are being seen first. The adoption center is closing on Monday, April 1st. As far as we know the adoption center will only complete the adoption process after April 1st for those who have accepted their referrals this week. This is why it is important to have a referral by this Friday so we can continue this process. If not we could be coming home without a child. On a brighter note, Karen and I are getting comfortable with our surroundings. We feel safe and are even speaking a little bit of Russian to the locals. We did make it to the downtown Kiev mall today. It almost looks the same as our malls. We had a nice lunch looking over downtown Kiev. We also got to see what the movie poster of ICE AGE II looks like in Ukrainian. After the mall we found a big grocery store and did some food shopping. Karen is attached to Chiken Kiev, while I like the chicken wings and Lays potato chips. The sun finally came out today, first time since we have been here and the weather is warm (probably about 50 degrees). Please continue to keep us in your prayers.

Appointment Day

Appointment day was finally here. Unfortunately we did not get a child today. We were shown very sick children and much older kids. We are told that the adoption center will be shutting down officially April 1st for a month to change over to a new department. We were aware this may be the case but we were told before we left the US that we still would be able to complete our adoption. This may not be accurate. Our fascilitator is working very hard to try to get us another appointment this week before they shut down as new children are added daily. Please pray that God's will be done in this situation. Our hearts are saddened, but we both feel at peace at this moment. Thank you so much for all of you who have been sending e-mails. Eric and I appreciate it so much. It is so good to hear from family and friends. We feel your "hugs" through the computer. We will update you as soon as we learn more of our progress.

First Day Adventure!

After sleeping most of the day away, we decided to go exploring. We went to McDonald's for lunch (I know, we played it safe! :) ) Our first face to face conversation with a Ukrainian was at Mcdonald's. After struggling to communicate our order of 2 Big Macs, 2 fries and 2 sodas, we ended up with 1 BigMac , 1 Fry, and 3 sodas! I guess we need to polish up on our Russian! :) After lunch, we saw a bunch of people rushing into the doors of a big building across the street. We thought it might be a mall, so we decided to follow the crowd. It ended up being a train station, so we had to then turn around and go against the flow to try to get out. It was interesting to be pushed around from side to side by hurried locals. We decided to head back to the apartment when Eric caught a glance of an open air market. We had such fun going down the rows, listening to the locals shop, and looking at all the items labeled in hyvanias (Ukrainian money). Everything is quite a bit cheaper here than in US. We had many encounters with the shop owners as we bought some necessities and they didn't speak any English but were very patient with our hand gestures.

We're Here!

We had a good time on our travel days hopping from plane to plane. We went from Greenville to Detroit to Boston to Paris to Ukraine all in 33 hours! Whew! Were we tired after we got here!!! We have had a huge culture shock. It is alot different here than what I expected. It will take a while to get used to all the changes. We went to the grocery store on the way from the airport to have a few things in our apartment. What an experience that was! Everytime Eric and I talked, the locals would stare at us as if we were movie stars or something! We are running into some bumps along the way so we ask that you please remember us in prayer. It looks like the adoption center is going to close down April 1st, so please pray we can find our child before then.

Private E-Mail for Eric and Karen while in Ukraine

You can reach Eric and Karen by private e-mail while they are out of country at the following address:

 

bringingherhome@yahoo.com

 

It is not certain how often they will be able to check messages.  You may also post comments on this blog.