Back in Kiev

Back in Kiev at 9:30 this morning after a 12-hour ride on the night train, which was extremely comfortable and air conditioned this time in first class. Julie and I had a compartment to ourselves. Not bad for $50 a person.

We applied today for another appointment at the SDA. We don't know how long that will take, probably longer than usual since this is vacation month and Independence Day is coming up.

Our job now is to regroup emotionally for the next step. Not sure how long that will take either.

The fellowship of sharing in his sufferings

We will probably be away from the internet for a while and need to let you know what is going on. We are taking the train back to Kiev today and will ask tomorrow for another appointment to look at more files, although right now it is impossible to imagine choosing any different kids. We had finally given ourselves permission to think of these as our own. We don't really understand why so many barriers were miraculously removed only for everything to be stopped today by the simplest thing; moreover, it was the thing that until yesterday was giving us hope that the other problems would not be showstoppers.

After about a week here, we were finally connecting well with both children and there were no apparent obstacles remaining. We had a hard time gaining much access to the little girl until Sunday evening, and she was very quiet with us until Monday evening, when she first said she wanted to go with us to America. The boy, on the other hand, we have visited once or twice every day, and all along he has been happy and saying he would like to go with us. Yesterday, when we were ready to start paperwork toward adoption, he began to refuse. This morning, despite the girl's pleading, he insisted that he did not want to be adopted. We've been surrounded by support from some of the professionals here as well as some of the extended family members of the children. However, by law, we cannot proceed without the child's consent. The matter has been thoroughly explained to him by several people, and we are all convinced that he is not inclined to change his mind although he was not open about his reasons.

Naturally, we are devastated by this unexpected response. Our hearts are heavy to think of the future they may face because their record now states the boy has refused adoption. We now have a glimpse into how our heavenly father must feel when people say no to him.

Pray for healing for our hearts, confidence that God is still in control, and peace as we process the events of the past week. Pray also for these precious ones who face a difficult future.

(Note: Comments are now enabled again. Thanks for your encouragements.)

No Apparent Progress

Today has been a discouraging and exhausting day. Does that mean that tomorrow will be a good one? We were not able to get any paperwork started, although we were able to spend time with both children together once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. It was clear that God was at work at various points in the day, even though it feels like we took a step backward overall. We are also counting on him to open doors tomorrow, when we expect to find out whether or not we can continue our efforts in this region.

We have been obliged to disable our comments section for now, but please continue to email us; we appreciate the encouragement and prayers!

First Time Together

Today had a discouraging start when we traveled half an hour by taxi to see the girl at a scheduled time only to find out that she was not in fact available. It was frustrating because two of our three visits with her had been cut very short. We explicitly submitted the situation to God and made the best of it by going to play with the boy before lunch instead of before supper. It ended up being our best time together so far, both fun and relational.

We went back to visit him again at our usual time and the first thing he told us (through the window) was that she was here. They normally are in the same institution seeing each other all the time, although they have been in two different places since before we arrived and haven't had the chance to talk about us. However, our facilitator was able to bring her out to join us while we were playing a game with her brother. I happened by chance to know enough Russian to announce, "Here we are together now for the first time!" and our facilitator took a lovely picture of the four of us, with the girl happily sitting in Julie's lap and the boy between us. Another highlight of the day was finding out that she had asked our facilitator when she saw him where Mama was.

Tomorrow will be an extremely important day as we go to the social worker's office to ask her to start doing the paperwork. We don't take any step for granted. It is somewhat overwhelming to hear how many documents and offices are involved even before the court hearing, but we'll take it one day at a time and are praising God for his clear answers to prayer so far. Unless he does the building, our own efforts are in vain. (I noticed for the first time this week how well that familiar verse sets up the second half of Psalm 127, which is about the Lord blessing people with children.)

Saturday Visits

We had separate visits again today with the boy and the girl, both with lots of smiles. In the morning, we had to cut our visit with the girl short because of forest fires nearby; we meet with her in a park area outside the gate. We could see the smoke in the road beyond where we were waiting, although we couldn't see any fire and I did not get the impression that there was a threat to people. There were no interruptions in our evening visit with the boy, which was very comfortable. We also had calls today from two important parties in the process that were both very encouraging.

The purpose of these daily visits is of course to build a relationship with these children that we already love. This is important for personal reasons (to start bonding as a family while still in a familiar environment so they will feel safe because of us when they leave it) and for procedural reasons (since they need to formally express a desire to be adopted by us). It's a big thing to do in just a few visits and an artificial setting.

We are journaling about what is happening and intend to post pictures and more details about our visits with the children at a later time.

This Roller Coaster has a Big Hill

Today we visited with both children and felt like we started to get closer to the girl, since we had about an hour with her while on Wednesday we had only about 10 minutes, which was not enough to get past the initial shyness. She was much more interactive verbally (in Russian) and sat between us very contentedly as we colored together and played an animal stacking game. Some other very good things happened today and we were alone in our room from 3 to 5:30 and were pretty much on cloud 9, definitely too revved up to get a real nap even though we really needed it.

However, when we went to visit the boy this evening, we found out about a new problem: some improperly motivated people that began an attempt this afternoon to stop the process. What is worse, they are involving the children directly in an emotional tug of war. We trust that the very competent and caring professionals who are involved will move the process forward to the result that they believe is in the children's interest, namely to be adopted into a loving home. However, there is now a very real danger to the children here and we ask that you pray that God will watch over them now and ultimately glorify himself by bringing about a good result.

While offices are closed this weekend, we will continue to visit the children (with our facilitator) and build our connection with them and to look for peace in the Lord at a time when our hearts are pretty vulnerable.

2 Meetings, 2 Playtimes, and 2 Hugs

Late post, as internet went down just before I published the post Thursday night:

We had two meetings this morning (Thursday), one in the office of the orphanage director and one in the office of the social worker in the kids' hometown. Both this social worker and the social worker for the orphanage (who has accompanied us both days) are extremely supportive of our adopting the children and have been amazingly kind. Praise the Lord, it appears that the obstacles we mentioned are probably going to be resolved. The broken Russian I learned last month has proven to be indispensable, both in Kiev and even more here.

We gave a toy and one of our photo albums to the boy after the meetings. We played a fun-filled game of Slamwich and then I helped him get started with putting together the Lego-like kit before we left for a 3:30 p.m. lunch. Then we came back in the late afternoon and he waved excitedly from the window when he saw us coming. For almost an hour before his bedtime, we talked through the album pictures of our house and our two nearest cousins' families, worked on the plane again, and played more Slamwich at his request. He gave both of us really sweet hugs when it was time to leave! (He also asked if he could keep the game overnight, and as we left I overheard him through the window explaining it to his roommate... I think we may be getting another gamer in the family!)

It was an intense, prayerful, and exciting day as we moved from increased concern about whether this would work out after the first meeting to a relieved optimism after the second meeting. Some future days may be just as full, but they hopefully will not offer such an emotional roller coaster. There are still a lot of details that need to fall into place, but the only thing scheduled for sure tomorrow Friday is a second visit to the girl.