Successful Third Appointment

We spent last night in an apartment occupied by a girl from Manitoba who is here teaching English and studying Ukrainian. It is about 45 minutes by bus and metro from Independence Square, but the price is right and it's close to the Blakers. Speaking of the Blakers, we hung out with them most of yesterday, although Art and I went downtown midafternoon to pick up our suitcases that had been in storage at the last apartment. We ate lunch together at an Uzbek restaurant, played San Juan and Roll Through the Ages, and overall found lots of good things to talk, laugh, and pray about.

This morning we showered (this is significant only because yesterday we didn't!) , watched another fantastic Mars Hill sermon from their Trial series on 1 and 2 Peter, and headed downtown in time to get lunch at a vareniki restaurant before our appointment. We were actually ushered into the sanctum 10 minutes before our scheduled appointment time. Waiting on the stairway landing isn't the greatest, but the SDA office is really the cheeriest government office I've been in, and both of the ladies who have worked with us there (Masha and Victoria) are always kind and merry. Both of their offices have a comfortable, L-shaped, tan couch for prospective parents with a coffee table to spread files out on.

We were shown several healthy sibling groups, even from Zaporizhia of all places. There was a lot of joking about our taking one group of four; I think Julie and Masha both enjoyed seeing me getting nervous! For the third time, though, God made our decision very clear. We both felt great from the first time we saw this group of three aged 8, 9, and 10 (two boys and one girl in the middle) and no hesitation or reservation in asking for a referral to them. There do not appear to be any obstacles like there were with the last referral, and their orphanage's social worker was very positive when Masha called her. They just became available for international adoption on Independence Day weekend.

So, all in all, it was a big answer to prayer today, and we are going to keep trusting God for each step. Tomorrow's step will be to pick up our referral papers around 4:30 p.m. and then catch a 12-hour train to Donetsk, the home of Viktor Yanukovich (the controversial pro-Russian president of Ukraine), Shakhtar Donetsk (last year's European champion soccer team, owned by Ukraine's richest man), and Ukraine's giant coal and steel industry. It feels good to be off the bench again, and we are very excited about these children.