(To the right: Kids at orphanage)
Hello Everyone!
The past two days have been pretty busy, as usual. (When’s the down time?) We started off yesterday by meeting Dima and visiting the CBN Orphanage Training Center here in Berdyansk. The center is being built to help orphans who have already left or are about to leave the orphanage. It will train them in computer and social skills that they will be able to use as young Christian adults in Ukraine. The center has been funded and paid for completely by donations through CBN. Without the center, the kids would have 2 choices for post high school schooling. The boys are trained to be auto mechanics at a trade school and the girls are trained to be bookkeepers. The training at the center is headed up by a wonderful team including a Christian couple, named Misha and Luda, and Dima. They are all wonderful spirit-filled people and it has truly been our pleasure to meet them. Unfortunately, the orphanage director is all of the sudden not in agreement with allowing the kids to visit the center because of the new, spirit-filled Christians that are running the center. Please pray for God’s favor for the team, center and children. The children love the team and are upset about the director’s change in attitude.
After visiting the center, we met with Luda and Misha for coffee, tea and sweets (candies and cookies). Afterwards, we picked up the girls and went to the local supermarket. We continue to turn many heads there by shopping like Americans (4 bags of groceries) and 3 children in tow, since the average Ukrainian family has one to two children.
Today, we started off with spending the first half of the day trying to get the court decree from the court appointment 2 days ago. We need this document to begin our paperwork hurdles, starting tomorrow. While Dan and Dima tackled the paperwork problem, Julie and Karen hit the market to knock out a little Christmas shopping. They changed course quickly after learning our documents had the wrong date on them and we would not be able to process documents today. We all met back at the hotel for lunch in the room. Throughout the whole morning, we have had a constant phone tree activated with Anya (Kyiv), Larissa (N. of Kyiv), Dima, Karen (Berdyansk), and Luda(Kyiv). The final outcome of all of the calls was we have to make a trip to Zaparozhzha tomorrow to get the court decree validated and to start some early processing of our other required documents (i.e. birth certificates, etc). Please pray this direction is correct and we will be able to accomplish some necessary steps to obtain the birth cert. and passports for the girls to be able to travel back to Kyiv on the 18th of Dec.
We had a great time, as usual, with the girls today. We got our passport, visa, and medical photos taken of them and will begin some processing for that soon. We are still getting a little “tude” every now and them from Nastia when she doesn’t get her way. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t realize just how stubborn her new mom and dad can be. No way will she win these battles with the seasoned parents.
We finished out the evening by having dinner with Dima and Karen. Tomorrow, Karen heads back to Kyiv after helping us with the documents tomorrow. We appreciate all of the prayers and blessings we have been given. Julie and I have been thinking more and more about being mother and father to 7 children and we settled on our new favorite biblical saying, which is, if Jesus can feed the multitudes, he can feed our family! Thank you all once again for your support and prayers.
God Bless,
Dan and Julie
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