Arrival in Poltava

Hi everybody. Sorry for not posting sooner. You will understand once we explain now.

First, leaving from Kiev to Poltava, we had to wait for our referral papers, which gives us authorizatin to contact the orphanage. We had to leave from the appartment by 9:20pm to make the train, and we were delivered our papers abour 8:45pm. We still had to pay the landlord for one more night and he came as we were taking our bags out to the car. Not having traveled by train anywhere, we have nothing to compare it to - other than we are glad we bought the entire compartment (4 births) as it was quite 'cozy'. We did have air conditioning though - once the train got rolling. We got into Poltava right around 5:30am.

We were met by our new facilitator Sergei, who will be with us the rest of the time. So we traveled to the orphanage at 6am to wait for the director. The 'correct' process is that we present the referral letter to an inspector (not at the orphanage, but at the city government office) and they give us legal paper to visit the orphanage. Sometime though the director of the orphanage will go ahead and agree to meet with you without the paper. Sergei had called ahead and the director was suppose to be in at 7am, but the inspector would not be in until the afternoon, so he suggested we go to the orphage and wait for her. So we did. 7am came, 8am came, and she came in about 8:45am. (This is totally normal for Ukraine - they are not time oriented like us Americans!) So we were able to meet with her. She was very nice. This is a very good orphanage. The place is clean, kids are well dressed, doing chores and seem to be happy as they make there way to class. At many of the orphanages, the kids go to school right there - and that was like this here.

After talking with her for a little while, she decided to let us visit with Svetlana for a couple of minutes, which turned into 45 minutes. Svetlana is a very vibrant 6 yr old - almost 7, who is very smart and not shy once she warms up to you. She is in the first year of school (Ukrainian kids usually start around age 6) and we were told she is the smartest in her class. She can even count to 10 in Italian. We bonded quite well with her which is why we think the director allowed us to spend more time with her. She sat on our lap and looked at our pictures and talked quite a bit - too bad we can't understand her without a translator!

Now - here comes the issues........

The SDA told us that she has a half sister - Alona. Ukraine does not allow families to be split up - so we are open to adopting them both. Alona had been moved to a different orphanage because her grades were not that good, and it was outside the city. The SDA called out to the orpahange on Monday to find our her updated information and the director at the orphanage told the SDA that he would not give any informaiton without official papers and that once he got those, he would 'think' about giving her the information! This is Ukraine at it's worst. Even the lady at the SDA called him crazy! He can lose his job for refusing - however, he is just playing hard ball. So, when we arrived in Poltava, we were told that the 'outside the city' is about an hour away. So, no children have ever been adopted from this orphanage that Alona is at. When Sergei called out there, the person did not even understand that she would have to fill out paperwork for us - even going to the city office, they had never done this before, so Sergei suggested we take some 'gifts' with us.

So - off we go to Kobelyaki. We stopped and bought our 'gifts', one for the city official and one for the director. We met with the city official, and spent some time talking with the office assistant Luda, who we spoke to in a little Russian, a little German and a little English. She was even very bold to ask if we were Christians, which she was, so got along that much better. We had to leave and come back because the inspector needed to review all the papers and the Mayor of the city had to sign it, but he was not in his office and his cell phone was turned off. So, he leaves at 4pm, so at 3:45pm we got a call that the Mayor was back, but he would not sign it until we met with him. So we went back to the city office with the inspector and then went to see the Mayor. He was a very nice man and told us that he didn't like to sign official papers for someone he had never met. He likes to meet with people first - makes sense - small town. He was very courteous so now it was just before 4pm and the director of the orphanage said he was leaving at 4pm - so Sergei called him and pleaded with him to meet with us, which he finally did.

This was not a pleasant meeting. We knew it would be tough based on how he treated the SDA on Monday. We will try and be brief. Alona is 10, therefore she has a right to say whether or not she wants to be adopted. We spent about 45 minutes or more with him and during that time, along with a teacher and Alona who came in shortly after we started talking with him. She is very shy. Ukraine has various families that host kids from orphanages and from regular familes throught Europe for the summer. Alona was scheduled to go to Italy in 2 weeks to stay with a family for the 3rd time. All the director seemed to do, was to remind her she would be giving up her trip to Italy with people she had built a relationship with. He was very anti-American in various ways, seemed to still have some allegiances to the way things were under USSR and was very controlling. (Explains why no kids have been adopted from here in the 11 years he has been there). It's almost as if he takes it personal that we are taking one of his own kids from him as he touted his accomplishments at the school. So....bottom line....Alona is too shy to say what she wants, but she thinks this Italian family wants to adopt her (even though they have done nothing). We have to go back tomorrow to get an answer from her, which we think will be no.

What this means is that we should be able to get a letter from the orphanage that says she declines to be adopted, and that will free us up to continue process with Svetlana - unless something else comes up. The court will allow families to split only if there is an official letter from the orphanage from the child that they do not want to be adopted.

We went back to Poltava and have an apartment for the next 2 nights here. Worst case scenario......we go back to the SDA for another referral letter for a different child. However, we do not think that will happen.

Thank you for keeping us in prayer. We are at peace with everything going on - even though you may think it is very frustrating.