February 26

We traveled first class on an overnight train trip to Kramatorsk, north of Donetsk. First class means just two passengers per cabin. It doesn't mean you should leave your duct tape at home.















Let me tell you about Masha's family. Masha's older brother Andreii picked us up from the train station. He is a mechanic but doesn't have much work now. Although Masha can drive, for longer, more complicated trips where extra traffic and directions and parking and watching the pretty nice car might be issues, he can be our driver. We have quite a bit of skibbling to do--from our lodging to this or that orphanage to this or that social worker's office to this or that regional official's office to this or that superdoopermarket. Remarkably, Kramatorsk is Masha's home, so we and she are very glad that she can stay each night at her home with her husband and two children (11 and 2). I don't know his name. Let's call him Yuri. Yuri is employed with a mobile phone company as a marketing manager. Masha's mother, Natasha, who also lives in Kramatorsk, is not employed other than to watch Masha's children while she and Yuri are at work. Natasha has a home with Masha's stepdad Stas that also has something like a "summer house" on the same property. Natasha and Stas offered to move into their summer house and we could rent their house. Stas can also be our driver, as he doesn't have work right now.

And it's our job to keep Masha's mom's cats from eating Masha's mom's husband's fish.
















The house is quintessientially Ukrainian in decor. The walls and ceiling and carpets curtains are all flowery. The house must be hundreds of years old and has been remodeled many times. There are holes and pipes and wires strung everywhere. This gives us compassion for what the new children will have to learn--trying to find light switches, figuring out how to use new appliances, etc. I am, however, typing on Stas's computer, using his Internet service. He's very proud of his new color printer/scanner/copier, but I won't be needing that.















We visited two delightful children today. Unfortunately they are several hours away from each other in different orphanages. They are adorable, but we've been warned not to get too attached until all the hoops have been missed once and jumped through on the second or third try.

February 24 - 25

Today Pam and I met Olga, a friend from Christ Church. We shopped for Ukrainian/English picture books. She is so gracious. She can probably join Pam at the hotel/apartment near the orphanage after I need to return to the States.

Masha called at 3:30 today. She had already bought train tickets to Kiravohrad. But then she had called the orphanage, and learned that the birth father had started an appeal to reestablish his parental rights. This information had not yet been passed on to Kyiv. Of course we would not try to come between children and their parents.

Masha also, amazingly, squeezed in an immediate interview. We were shown a couple more folders. Quick deliberations and we agreed to check it out. Masha hoped for a referral that day yet, since our dossier was already processed by the State Department of Adoption (SDA). We waited in the stairwell with 30 other people from Sweden to America, but when our time came to get the referral, we learned it was not complete. So we'll try again on Wednesday.

Wednesday

We took Pam's nice wool pants to a tailor to get new lining. It looked like she had mice in her pants. :)

Off to SDA, and then, we think, to Donetsk.

February 23

There's a line from an Ani DeFranco song that I hear on oldies stations from time to time:

"Wishin', and hopin', and thinkin', and prayin',"

The next part has nothing to do with what I should be writing about, so I'll spare you the details, but what does one do between 3-6 am, when the mind is wide awake but knows it should be sleeping? I tried having imaginary conversations with the agency officials. They would ask a question in Ukrainian, our facilitator would translate to English, and I would respond in Ukrainian. Then our translator would translate my Ukrainian back into English and then into real Ukrainian so the agency officials could understand.

O and S left for Turkey this morning. We're on our own! So Pam's curling iron had a hissy fit and burned out our power transformer.

We walked to the office, which is at the top of Andrievsky Uzviz, a long winding cobble-stone street lined with restaurants, art galleries, souvenir peddlers, and dogs.

Our appointment was at noon but we met Masha at 11:00. We were directed away from the front entrance to the Ministry for Families, Youth and Christian Nurture (oops, that's one of our church positions) to a side entrance. The statues in the image above are in front of this ministry building. I guess they don't want couples and their facilitators cluttering up a relatively small but nice entry. So we cluttered up an even smaller and less nice entry. Masha wisely suggested we spend our next hour having tea at a nearby restaurant.

Masha shared with us that the meeting would be with a woman psychologist, and would share with us the brief profiles of the available children. Ukrainian law states that neither of us can be more than 45 years older than the youngest child, so that means the kids would be, let's see, ... all grown up. Or older than 3 years, 10 months.

Contrary to some stories we've heard, she was not aggressive, surly, or difficult in any way. She and her coworker both had cross necklaces, just like Pam's. We had a one-hour appointment to study the profiles, which consist of names, birthdates, one picture, some medical information, etc. Our task, which we pray is blessed by God, is to determine the best fit for our family.

If I don't go into details of our deliberations and prayers, I'm sure you'll understand why.

We took a break from 1 - 2:30 for lunch and for Masha to photocopy our dossier for the orphanage director, then went back to share our good-faith decision and initiate the next step, which is arranging a time with the orphanage to visit. We will get that Tuesday at 5:00, which is when we agreed to meet Masha next. We think we'll be able to travel Tuesday evening, likely to Kirovohrad. Most Ukrainians take the overnight train, to save a night of lodging expense.

In the evening I went downtown to get Pam a new curling iron. All part of her fashion makeover.

February 21-22

We are in Kyiv, at the home of good friends, whom we'll call O & S. I've fallen asleep three times already at the keyboard. Trying to relate to my students, I guess. Or maybe I'm too old to be a new parent again?

We flew from Lincoln to Minneapolis quicker than you could say "Northwest Airlines went bankrupt and is now part of Delta but the employees are paid by Pinnacle and for sure nobody knows what's up."

The Minneapolis to Amsterdam flight was overbooked. I offered to get bumped but Pam would not let me. We had to negotiate with fellow passengers just to sit next to each other. Not the WWF kind of negotiation, more like "Would you mind if we snogged?"

Amsterdam had tulips already. Imagine that. I think they must import them at Dutch auctions. The smokers at the airport had to confine themselves to a 10' x 12' plexiglass room with special vents. Looked like a non-oxygen tent.


I was carrying two laptops, one mine and one a new MacBook for a missionary here whose prior machine went kaputski and who wanted to avoid the sockitome value added tax. I should have let Pam carry one. I looked extra suspicious, so was flagged by customs. The suitcase full of stuffed animals didn't convince the nice young man that I was a nice old man. He hemmed and he hawed. He didn't really want to charge me the stiff gift duty so he had me chase Pam down, who had already exited and had met our driver, Nina. I brought Pam back in, who looks a lot nicer than I do, and the nice young man had her "assigned" to the second laptop.

We're staying in a 3-story townhome, and O & S have graciously offered to host us for as long as we need to stay in the capital, both now and later. They'll even be gone to Ankara and Moscow during our stay, so that is amazingly kind of them. They helped out another couple doing this all last year.

We walked around the Podil part of town with O & S where we're staying, locating markets and banks and public transportation gathering spots. Nina thinks it is the cockroach corner of town, but this flat is only 15 years old and is very, very nice. Having lived in Kyiv in 2005 for 6 months, and having visited again in 2007 with students, really helps counter my natural state of disorientation. We still appreciated the warning to watch out for icicle daggers that could drop any time from building rooftops, which would be sort of like acupuncture--without the beneficial claims.



O asked why we were doing this adoption. Fair question! I think Psalm 68:5 sums it up, describing the love of our heavenly father: "A father to the fatherless, a defender of the widows, is our God in his holy mountain. He sets the lonely in families." We've seen the lonely. We've got family (cue Motown). We sort of know what it's like to be stewards of two daughters already, and we think it is a pretty wonderful privilege. We think we can be part of God's "setting" again, for another couple of Jesus' little lambs. Hence sibling set, take two.

Andy