Our Second Appointment at the SDA

Andrew picture taking

Sorry, we've moved a fourth time and don't have internet in our room. We just now found an internet cafe about a 40 minute walk from our apartment.

Alla stopped by our apartment around 1:30pm to meet with the apartment personnel where we are staying to help us move to an apartment upstairs. Okay we are in our 3rd apartment since we’ve been here. It’s getting a little tiring being shuffled around, but from what I understand we are not the only family that has moved 3 times since they’ve been here as well. After we moved all of our belongings upstairs to another apartment we were on our way to the SDA.

As we approached the building where the SDA is in (right next to St. Andrew’s church), we saw Valentina our facilitator for the first time since we’ve been here. She was sick last week and didn’t want to pass the cold onto us. It is so nice to see her again. We gave her a big hug and she was taken by Andrew and how he has grown and how much he has learned in the past 3 years. We shared with her our photo album and she wanted Andrew to tell her who everyone was in our family, his school and events that we took pictures of.

Our appointment started right on time, which was 3:00pm. I was happy to see that the psychologist Maria, whom we had in our first appointment was taking us into her office again. She is a friendly woman who seemed favorable towards us and Andrew.

She showed us 2 files that were just released from the ministry yesterday. One was a 5 year old boy and the other was a 3 year old boy. We didn’t realize at first that the two boys are siblings. They both have minor health issues therefore we asked Maria to call the orphanage about them to find out more details. The orphanage directors confirmed that the boys are available and their medical reports were true therefore we have accepted to visit these boys on Monday. They are in a region called Cherkasy that is a 3 hour drive South from here off of the Dnipro river from what we understand. We will travel by car early Monday morning to meet them. Please continue to keep us and these boys in prayer for all to go well on Monday. After meeting them we will make our decision from there.

Health is more important to us than gender, therefore we decided to meet these boys. We will call Dr. Yuri this weekend to see if he can either travel with us or meet us on Tuesday to give his prognosis after his exam and evaluation. Please pray and agree with us that there are no major health issues that were not listed in their files.

My Soccer shirt

After our appointment we stopped to buy Andrew a Ukrainian futbol or what we call soccer shirt in his size. I promised to get him one if he was quiet and sat still in our appointment. As we were purchasing one Valentina had Andrew pick out a Ukrainian nesting doll for himself as a gift from her. You can really tell that both Valentina and Alla have a real heart for children. They were giving him so much attention after our appointment that he was starting to get a bit silly.

Watdhing the painters from our 3rd apartment

Chilling out

Both Robert and I are praying and hoping that everything goes well on Monday, so we can move forward with this adoption and get home as soon as possible.