Gathering paperwork...

On Friday, after our SDA appointment, our attorney was able to gather some necessary paperwork from the orphanage and also scheduled a meeting with the region inspector for Monday. On Saturday, our attorney took us and the boys "opekun - the person who has custody of the boys", to the notary and we had whole bunch of paperwork done and notarized....such as my permision for my husband to adopt the boys, the custodians permission of the boys to be adopted by us, and other similar papers. Even though our boys live at the orphanage, there is a family-like system here, where families come and live here for 2 years and take in around 10 kids, so that they better understand family life and its easier for them to transition once they are adopted. So that is the reason why we needed to have the custodian go with us to the notary...
Today we are leaving at 8AM (in about 20 minutes) to the regional inspectors office to continue with the paperwork, after that we are all coming to the orphanage again and gathering paperwork here for the boys so that our attorney can turn it in to the court and schedule a court date for us. Yesterday, the boys had to write officially on paper that they want to be adopted by us...and they were very happy to write this...
We are constantly surrounded by kids here...after they come home from school...many of them are in our room and we all have tea and eat... Most of them are older kids and its so sad to hear their stories.. They all want a family and many pray constantly... If someone is interested in adopting older kids, please email me at maranatha220033@yahoo.com
Yesterday, Aleks, me and other kids, went to walk around the town here at night and it was fun. They really want to stay in the room with us, so the we will have arrangements done so that they can sleep with us. We have two extra beds in our room.
I will write more later...

SDA Appointment!

This is us by SDA building (on the right).

Well, we met our wonderful attorney and her husband the day before our appointment with the SDA. She is a very nice lady and very experienced and knows what she is doing. Also very respected at the SDA.





We had our appointment at 10:30AM. We were called into the office and set down to talk to one of the workers. We were showed 2 files of our boys and just asked 2 simple questions, such as how do you know the boys and do they already know that you are here to adopt them. We showed the ladies our album, and one of the workers remembered our daughter whom we adopted in 2006. She used to work for the childrens police and remembers filing all the papers for her when she was found on the street. Everyone was very nice and sweet. Our whole appointment lasted for about 7 minutes, if that!


After the appointment, our attorney went to take a copy of the dossier and we were off to eat lunch. After lunch we came to the orphanage to collect some paperwork and our attorney, went back to the SDA to pick up our official "referral" and then to inspectors office. On Saturday morning, we are going to the Notary to get some papers notarized. Since the boys are over the age of 10 , they will need to write a letter stating that they want to be adopted by us.


Everything is great here, our baby still wakes up in the middle of the night and wants to eat and play... We get to spend time with the boys everyday. They go to school, after school they do their homework, and come to our room to eat and chat (and most of the time take many of their friends). So our room is pretty open to everyone any time of the day, we love it though!
Yesterday evening Aleks and I went to walk around their town. We went to the local store and then he showed me his school. Dima comes after school to us, to get help with his English homework...his grade is going up in English..hmmm... We dont know yet, when we want to take them out of school officially...Most likely they will go to school for one more week and then they will be done.. We want to travel during our 10 day waiting period and take them with us.


Keep praying so that our whole adoption process goes smoothly and there are no hold ups...Many blessings to all of you!

God is good!

We are in Kiev, Ukraine now and its snowing!!!!!

We have already seen God's hand in our travels. Our flight was great! We came to the airport in Portland and were easily checked in and were told that the airplaine that we were to fly on (that fit around 300 people) only had 80 people!!!! It was a great flight from Portland to Amstradam, we each had 4 seats to sleep comfortably on....and the flight went by so fast... The airplaine was great with a tv screen in each seat, that entertained our daughter with cartoons and games...

We arrived in Amstradam safely and only stayed there for about one hour and half before getting on a flight to Kiev. That flight was only 2.5 hours and we slept through all of it...

When we got to Kiev, we got into a HUGE line at the passport control. We were exhausted, and out of no where, in the midst of all these people and lines, one of the airport workers came and directed us to another window where there was no line at all!!!! We had our passports checked and went through to pick up our luggage. After receiveing all of our luggage, we set down to fill out the declaration form, but as soon as we set down, a man came up and asked us if we needed help transporting our luggage...for $30 bucks! Well, what that meant was, "do you want me to take you through customs without declaration form or suitcase checks". We agreed..so basically since arriving in Kiev, it only took us about 15-20 minutes to get from the airplaine and out of the airport!!! God is good! He already took care of every little detail!

We were greeted by our friends from Fathers House and taken to the orphanage... The boys live on the third floor of the building. When we walked in, they were eating...they could not believe what they saw...they looked again and then ran to us!!! They were so excited! It felt great to be reunited with them again!

Then we already had a wonderful dinner made for us at the orphanage, so we all went to eat and drink tea.. Later we took our luggage up to our room, and its was wonderful! Its a huge room with three twin beds, pushed together, and another one further by the wall. It also has a office table with chair and a sofa..oh yea, and a HUGE closet! These people are so sweet!

Today, while the boys were at school, we were driven by one of the staff at Fathers House to the grocery store, where we bought some food. We will be eating at the orphanage when we are here...they have wonderful food and plenty of it...and they only charge 5 grivnyas (about 80 cents) per meal! The dollar keeps growing here, today it was 6.6 grivnyas per 1 dollar.

After the boys got back from school, they all came to our room and all of their friends too..so we had a lot of fun laughfing and talking about life in Amarica...

Tomorrow, we will call our attorney in Ukraine to discuss when we will meet and what is needed for our SDA appointment on Friday.
We give our thanks to God for all His comfort and care for us on this journey...

WE ARE OFF TOMORROW!!

We are leaving tomorrow for our SDA appt. on the 28th of November. The funny thing is that Aleks wrote me an emial and said, "mom, I cant wait till you guys come to get us...we miss you so much". They have no idea that only in one day we will see each other again... We were told that its really cold in Ukraine now and have packed all warm clothing... The room is ready at the orphanage for us and we will get to live with our boys while we are in Ukraine.
Our church prayed for us today and blessed our trip. Thanks to everyone who is praying for us... We still have some packing to do and then we are off tomorrow!!! I will post when we get to Ukraine.
Please keeep praying for us for a safe flight and for God's blessings throughout the process...

Tickets!

We are leaving to Ukraine in less then 2 weeks from today! We are really excited! We speak with our boys, but we still did not tell them when we are coming, they have no clue! The orphanage already knows when we are coming and have prepared a room for us. We will be staying in Fathers House, where our boys are and will be spending a lot of time with them. So a friend that works at Fathers House will pick us up from the airport and take us to Fathers House.
This has been a very busy week for us. We were busy getting the boys' room prepared and also remodeling our daughters' rooms. They are almost all done, except for we still need beds for the boys' room because they were all sold out! So we keep calling to see when the store will have them in stock.
I have been looking for good deals on airfare and finally after a week of searching, ordered our tickets. We are leaving on the 24th of November. We are taking our youngest daughter who is 2 1/2 years old with us, so we needed a flight where we would not need to wait long in the airport. We got a great flight with only one stop. Thank God for His blessing in finding these tickets and at a great price too! We are hoping we will complete all adoption paperwork in the timeframe of our tickets, but its a total guess...our hope is in God. When we adopted our daughter in 2006, we also had an apointment date in November, but the 17th... We booked tickets for 3 weeks, thinking we would be done fast, but ended up staying in Ukriane exactly 3 months!!! But God was good till the end and we did not have to purchase new airfare. Our airfare was good for changes for 3 months. We came to Ukraine November 15, 2006 and left February 15, 2009..it was exactly 3 months! It was very cold and we walked A LOT and I came there being 6 months pregnant with my daughter and left when I was almost ready to give birth at 9 months... But I made it back to US and gave (easy) birth to a wonderful, healthy daughter.. Praise God!
So we, again, place all of this adoption process in the hands of our loving Father, who controls everything and everyone. And in His hands is the safest place to be.
I will download pictures of the boys' room hopefully this week...

APPOINTMENT DATE!!!!

We are so excited! I woke up this morning to find out that I had an email from our attorney. We have a date for the meeting with SDA on NOVEMBER 28th, 2008 at 10:30AM! This is great news for us! I will be looking for tickets today. We would like to arrive in Kiev couple of days before our appointment. Its so good to finally know when we are going~!!! We will not be telling the boys, this will be a surprise for them... I can just imagine their faces, when they will just see us at the orphanage...How exciting~!

Pictures...

I am posting some pictures of our boys. The first one is of Aleks going into 8th grade and Dima going into 7th grade in September, 2008. They put on their new clothes and new backpacks and were ready for school. The orphanage emailed this picture to us. The kids werent too happy because they only returned to Kiev from visitig Oregon, couple of days before school started. But they sill look so handsome!!! The other three pictures, I received from a friend who traveled to Fathers House for the last 10 years and helped them a lot. She has taken these pictures and emailed them to me today. The pictures are from many years ago. We are so fortunate to have these pictures of our boys and to see them when they were just kids...now they are growing into handsome young men.... We thank God for leading us to them and that we can be their parents here on earth. They are just adorable!!!! And to think that they were registered with the SDA for so many years and not even one family came to visit them to concider them for adoption! We are grateful to have them in our lives!