Saying goodbye......

Yesterday (Sunday) we were able to take Svetlana to church with us again. She was comfortable enough to stay by herself, so Suzanne was able to go in this week for service. We were able to spend a little more time talking with the team that just came in from Melbourne, and about the outreaches they would be doing while there. It's good to see a healthy/active church here in Poltava.

After church, we called Sergei and got good news. Neelya's family was able to get permission to take her from camp so we could have dinner together! We kept it as a surprise for Svetlana until just before we left. We had spent the afternoon trying on the clothes we brought (which have to be taken in - she'e pretty tiny) and took her to get shoes. You haven't seen anything until you take a almost 7 year old girl, into a store to buy shoes who has never been shopping before! (At least as far as we know and by her actions). Going to the store in America will have to be planed as an all day excursion - not because she likes to shop - but because we will have to take a lot of time to practice our manners! 'Reach, grab and drop' - too many choices! We did finally find a pair of sandals for her and then they didn't have her size for sneakers. We had to have a long conversation about why she had to wear sneakers in America after she told us - 'I'm not going to wear them and you can't make me'! It's hard to imagine having a life where half of it was spent on the streets fending for yourself, and the other half has been only with limited instruction. God has already given us a lot of patience - but we are certainly emptied at the end of each day.

We met with Neelya and her family at 5pm and a new restaurant that was recommended by someone at the orphanage. It had all kinds of things for kids to do there - lots of birds and animals in cages built into the walls, toys, computers with games for older kids - it was very uniques for Ukraine. Svetlana and Neelya were almost inseperable. They both new it would be their last time together before Svetlana goes to America, so we let them be together as much as possible. We got to know Neelya's foster parents better - Alla and Valya - and had a good talk over the girls. They shared a lot of information with us that we would not have been able to find out from the orphanage, because it came straight from Neelya after she has gotten closer to them. We took them after dinner to the cars in the park that Svetlana had been on about a week ago, and boy....Neelya got behind the wheel of her favorite 'vehicle' and we were in shock! What happened to the sweet little obedient girl at dinner? Crazy drivers is an understatment- with 4 hands on the steering wheel (Svetlana was the co-pilot)! We found out why it was Neelya's favorite - because it's one of the fastest! None of us knew what to do as she drove round and round and people had to jump out of the way! We finally got them to settle down and made then switch cars and things were quite more in control. We took a slow walk back to the orphanage and as the girls took time to say there final good-bye's, it was an emotional night for everyone. We are happy though the girls have such a close bond. We hope we can come back soon to visit so that they will continue to be close.

Today, we spent all day in Globino (about 2 hours away) getting the birth certificate changed over and other misc. paperwork. The paperwork was a blur today - we finally got tired of figuring everything out and just said - tell us where we go next....When you have to do things like get the birth certificate then get it authenticated, but you have to go to the bank and pay the fee to get it authenticated because they can't take money of the government office, and then have to bring the receipt back....you just can't keep track of everything. But - we got back to Poltava, did the other stuff we needed to do to present paperwork for the passport and got it all done by 5pm. Sergei is the best! Tomorrow, he will go to deliver the papers to get Svetlana's Ukrainian passport and we should be able to pick it up in the afternoon. So we will be heading back to Kiev tomorrow night - God willing. It will be hard to leave as we've become friends with Sergei and the people at the orphanage, and at church. I can't say we'll miss the Ukrainian style of driving on the long distances (nobody should complain about the drivers in America anymore - you haven't seen anything like this!).

So we will be picking up Svetlana sometime tomorrow, doing some last minute shopping and then we are off to Kiev on the train to finish our paperwork now with the U.S. Embassy.

This will be our first whole day AND night with us together as a family.......pray for our continued guidance and patience and for ALL OF US to make the adjustment easily....