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.
"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.
Think we found you in Kirovohrad, about 150 miles from Kiev. Was it a short night, or a slow train? Where are you staying? What an adventure. Praying all goes well there and looking forward to hearing more! Our love -
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