More Red Tape!

(To the right: Grisha, Karen, and Dan eating at McDonald's; Grisha, Julie, and Karen in McDonald's parking lot)

Hello Everyone!

Today was a 12 hour day! Wow, praise God for his favor and protection today. We started out with our favorite taxi driver, and new translator #6, Grisha! Yes, our first stop was to fix documents in Vasyvleka for the classification of Nastia and Galina as orphans. We had already done this with Larissa (translator #3), but the documents were not bound together with the typical string through all the pages in the ice pick holes and then taped to the paper, therefore not acceptable to the notary as “official”.

This event deserves the history of its conception. We needed a Ukrainian citizen to show a passport to obtain this new document. Since we were running low on translators, Dan ran the idea by Larissa via phone to have our cab driver go into the court building and pick up the documents. She said, “this may work” and called the cab driver and orphanage to make arrangements. So, yesterday we had to obtain permission from the orphanage director to have a new document made for us again. When we arrived in her office to pick up the document with Karen Springs, aka translator #5 “the American who speaks Russian” and wonderful friend, the orphanage director asked who “Grisha…” was on their permission slip. You can imagine her shock when we told her it was our cab driver!!! Yes, I think she thinks we are crazy Americans for sure.

Anyway, our new translator, Grisha did a wonderful job obtaining the necessary documents from the court and could you believe when he came out of the office again the documents didn’t have the string!! Dan suggested we do this back at the hotel with our sewing kit, but just to be safe we went back in and Grisha and Karen explained what we needed.

We arrived in plenty of time to go to the McDonalds’s in Zaprozhzha!! Eat your heart out Helen, Joshua and Jacob! Grisha told Karen he had only had McDonald’s once before and commented it was better to eat at home!! We picked up another official translator (#7) Ludmila to accompany us to this region’s Regional Registrar’s office to verify our adoption documents. This step is to release the new birth certificates for the girls. This is needed to obtain their passports. Praise God, after much disagreement with the judge here in Berdyansk that we could start this process without the 10 day waiting period. The registrar gave us the verification which is good on Dec. 15th. We showed her the order which said she could START the process. Now we can go to the Berdyansk and Vasyvleka (1.5hr away) offices to obtain our birth cert. first before heading to Zap (2.5hr away) to get passports on the 15th instead of making three trips there in one day. We also drove around to 6 notary offices to get our passport application filled out and notarized. However, we were told “today is not a good day to need a notary”. All of the notaries were in a regional meeting today and most were not returning to work afterwards. We need a translator to do this work, so watch out for our update on translator #8 to follow soon!

Sadly, we took Karen to the train station for her trip back to Kyiv tonight. It was unbelievable we were saying goodbye to her. She will be returning to the US next week for Christmas, and we will not be able to see her in Kyiv. What a wonderful woman of God and so giving! We are so blessed to have the wonderful team of Christians working their hearts out for this adoption.



(To the right: The Zaporozhzha Train Station)

Our drive back to Berdyansk from Zap was tense. The fog was horrible, and we could hardly see past the front bumper. We saw at least 5 bad accidents. Grisha, 22 yrs old, did a wonderful job. Thank you so much Anya (translator #1) for all of the work from Kyiv for arranging the day today!

Thanks to everyone for your continued support and prayers. We are so blessed to have wonderful friends and family like you all.

Many Blessings,
Dan and Julie