Can Blog At Last!! (I think!)

We are on day 4 of our adventure. I am finally able to get in to blogger. I tried to put in a flash drive and cut/paste everything I have written on my laptop over the last four days, then it caused the screen to go blank. It is hard to add anything to blog when the instructions are in Russian. I will just write an abbrevated message to kind of cover everything.

Day 1 - Traveled from MSP to Chicago. We were delayed several hours leaving Mpls due to snow storm. We arrived at Chicago with 8 minutes to run through the airport to get to our gate. Luckily that plane was delayed too or we wouldn't have made it.

Day 2 - Arrived in Munich a little late. Had 15 minutes to run to our gate. We just made it!! No time to sit down to take a break! Arrived in Kiev. Our luggage did not come with us! We had to fill out papers in "Lost and Found." The girl there also helped us fill out the declaration forms and walked us through customs. That was an added blessing to our misadventure. We got VIP treatment for free! Sveta and driver were waiting for us. They took us to our apartment.

Day 3 - Went to visit Children's Hope orphanage to visit my little sponsored girl Lyuda. We had found out about 3 weeks before that she was reunited with her father and was no longer there, but that they were going to bring her to CH so we could see her again. There was a miscommunication and she wasn't there. They gave us a tour of CH anyway. It has changed a lot in the almost 2 years since we have been there. They made all the rooms into rooms for 2-4 kids instead of 10-12. They also fixed up the girl's bathroom. They didn't have enough funds to do the boys bathroom. They showed us the stove that "we" bought (with donations) on our last trip and took pictures of us with it. The cook said that God would bless us for giving that to them.

Day 4 - SDA appointment!!! (SDA stands for State Department of Adoptions) Sveta said she would pick us up at 9, but she didn't come until 9:30 and I have to say I was a little stressed, wondering if she was going to come. (Our cell phone doesn't work, so we couldn't call her). But they came with our luggage, and then we went downtown to our appointment. We feel that we got a good referral and are being sent to Odessa. We don't want to say anymore than that until we meet the children and accept the referral. We will stay in Kiev through the weekend and leave Sunday night on the overnight train to arrive in Odessa Monday morning and hopefully we find favor with the inspector who needs to accompany us to the orphanage. (Please pray for that.)

Of course, there are tons more details to go along with this, and I have it all saved on my laptop. If I can figure out how to post that later, I will. Until we have more news......will blog at you later!! Thanks for checking out our blog and sorry it took me so long to post anything!