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