Take care of the Orphans!

(To the right: Precious, little kids from the orphanage just after dinner.)

Hello everyone!

Yesterday, Saturday, Anya (from Kyiv via phone), Dan and Dima (CBN Berdyansk) had a long meeting with the passport agency here in Berdyansk. Anya translated to Dan after Dima told her what the lady was saying. It was progressive, informative and helpful. Praise God! These steps need to be done because Luda is 14. This office has to run a background check on Luda. They also will update the girl’s names on their tax ID numbers since the children will have dual citizenship until 18 yrs. old. At 18 the girls will have to pick their citizenship either the U.S.A or Ukraine.

Since our trip to Zaporozhzha, we have learned God was sparing us further delay in not getting the passport application notarized. At the meeting with the passport office in Berdyansk, we learned there we needed more information for them. Had we notarized the application we would not have known to do this step in Berdyansk. It is a blessing to have these thing started during the 10 day wait, and we continue to praise God for his direction and for the judge who has given us God’s favor.

We also went to the grocery store for some more “American” type shopping. Yes, we had everyone watching us due to our different style of shopping (bulk, children and groceries). If they could only see us once we get home!!

Later today, we are invited to dinner at Misha and Luda’s home again. They are so wonderful and despite the language barrier we do well together. Misha and Luda speak some English to our 15-30 words of Russian!! So, dictionaries are a must for each step outside of our hotel room. Wow, my purse will be lighter once we return home.

Tomorrow, we have some more document preparation to do to organize the girls’ paperwork for the passport and birth certificate office. We are progressing forward with our knowledge of independent adoption with the full assistance of the CBN Ukraine team.

Blessings to you and thank you for the many prayers,

Dan and Julie

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

What down time!?

(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

Court was a HUGE SUCCESS!!!!

(To the right: Karen, Sasha, & Marina at orphanage)

Hello Everyone!

Praise God, we now have 7 children! Court went well and we now have 3 more daughters. We still have to wait the 10 days to make it completely official, but for all intents and purposes, we have added 3 new sisters to the family.

We started the day by greeting Karen and Valery to Berdyansk. They arrived at 8am this morning. We had a nice breakfast and afterwards, Dan and Valery took some documents to the judge prior to our designated court appointment today. After a few phone calls to make sure everything was in order, we got everyone gathered at the court. We had to wait a while for the prosecutor to show up. However, after she arrived, we were invited into the judge’s office to begin the court hearing. Present at the hearing were us, Valery (our translator), Ladies #1 & 2, the orphanage lawyer, the judge, and the judge’s secretary.

During the hearing, we were asked questions about our intentions for the girls and details about our home and jobs. After answering all questions, Lady #2 was asked to stand and give her/the state’s recommendation. Praise God, she gave us a favorable recommendation. Next, they asked the girls to come in one by one and tell in their own words if they would like to come to the U.S. and live with us. After everyone had given their inputs, we were asked to step out while the judge made her decision. After about 10 minutes, we were asked to come back into the judge’s office, where she read to us her decision to change the names of the girls. She told us that the girls should be with us. Obviously, there was much celebration after that. It was so emotional in the office that even lady #2 was crying. The total time for the court proceeding was about an hour.



(Above: Karen and girls outside of court after hearing; All of us and Judge after hearing.)

After court, we got Valery to the bus station and visited with the girls at the orphanage. Since it was so late, we were unable to bring the girls back to the hotel. We will see them tomorrow at 2pm. They were all very excited to be sisters now.

Thank you for all of your prayers. We hope to get a copy of the court decree on Wednesday morning and will be able to start the birth certificate/passport paperwork early in hopes that we will just have to pick it up on the 15th of December.

God Bless,
Dan and Julie

A beautiful day!

(To the right: Hotel construction where the crew moved all of the concrete slabs by hand as well as installed all of the bricks in the sidewalk in a matter of days!)

Hello Everyone!

Today, we had a great day with the girls. We picked them up at 10am and then went to the outdoor market. We bought sweaters, jeans, and shoes. We communicated using our calculators, fingers and Luda! After dropping the things off at the hotel room, we walked to our favorite pizza place here in Berdyansk. We are obviously recognized there, because Luda was given a form to fill out and then an envelope. It contained a discount (skitka) card!

After lunch, we went back to the hotel for a while before going to our friends’, Misha and Luda, home. They had prepared a wonderful meal for us. Misha and Luda had invited Julia Savizkaya, a prior Berdyansk orphan, to dinner to be our translator. Julia is now 16 and is no longer allowed to be at the orphanage because of her age. However, she still has a sister at the orphanage and 2 brothers at another orphanage nearby. The good news is that she and all of her siblings are in the process of being adopted by a family from the states. Misha and Luda’s kids and our girls had a lot of fun together. As we left, our girls asked if they could return tomorrow.



(To the right: Luda & Julia and all of the kids playing)

Tomorrow, when we see the girls it will be to take them to the court for our appointment, praise God! We are very anxious for our appointment tomorrow. We ask for prayers and God’s favor for a favorable court judgment. We are going to ask Valery to clarify the judge’s statement to Larissa that we can start some documentation for birth certificates and passports after court tomorrow. This would be wonderful since our ten day wait period ends getting our documentation from the court Friday morning, and we have a lot of traveling around to do to wrap things up in this region before heading back to Kyiv. The weekend would keep us here longer.

We thank God for the wonderful new friends we have here and the favorable weather so far.

God Bless,
Dan and Julie

One day 'til Court!!!

(To the right are pictures of the children at the orphanage on a Saturday morning. Please pray for them!)

Hello Everyone!

Yesterday we had a wonderful time with the girls and received good news about a translator. First, Dan was up at 5:45am to go meet the bus from Kyiv to pick up the SDA documents for court on Monday. A little bit of a challenge without a translator, but as our new saying goes over here from Dima (CBN Berdyansk), “it’s OK”. Praise God, we have all of the documents required for court at 2pm Monday. Additionally, we were told the CBN Kyiv lawyer, Valery, who is also a licensed translator, will be coming down Monday for our court appointment. Our wonderful friend Karen Springs will be coming with him (She speaks Russian!!).

After Dan’s morning paperwork run, we went to get the girls. We have a taxi system set up with a father and son (Grisha). Oddly enough, Grisha is the taxi driver who ran out of gas chasing the bus. We crowded back into the taxi and ventured down to the sea side for some sightseeing. It was a little warmer than it has been, so it was nice to see some different parts of Berdyansk. Berdyansk is a tourist city on the Sea of Azov just northeast of the Black Sea. Unfortunately, due to the off-season, many shops along the sea wall were not open. We took some pictures and then went to the outdoor market for fresh fruit and the girl’s favorite, chocolate cake. (Helen you would love this!! We will try and make it at home.)




We came back to the hotel and had soup, fruit, and cake. Afterwards, we watched the Letter Factory, did English workbooks, and then watched Elf. We had no real flare-ups with limit testing today. Nastia accidentally leaned against a light switch and looked at us with really big eyes and quickly flipped it back off. I think she’s getting it. We are communicating pretty well with the girls right now. What the little ones don’t understand, Luda usually fills in with Russian.



Finally, we took the girls back at 6pm and came back to the hotel. We were both quite tired. Most of it is not being able to comprehend the language that is being spoken everywhere around you. So, we came back up into the room and put on some episodes of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” It seems good to just sit and listen to English for a while. Today, we get the girls at 10am, and this afternoon, we will be visiting Misha and his family with the girls. Thank you all very much for your continued support and prayers. The judge told Larissa we would be able to gather documents during our waiting period with a document she would give us the day of court, but the lady in Vasilyevka didn’t agree this was correct. We still need prayers to be able to come home early and before Christmas.

Blessing to you at home,
Dan and Julie

He Reigns!

(To the right are photos of 2 boys from the orphanage and 2 boys with Larissa)

Hello Everyone!

The past two days have been bitter-sweet. We began yesterday with news that our documents would be done at the SDA, but the director might not sign them due to her being out of the office. These documents have to come back to Berdyansk in order for us to have our court appointment. Next, we scrambled to find a way to get the documents here the same day to potentially have a court date today, assuming we got the aforementioned signature. After most of the administrative issues were out of the way, we proceeded to the Berdyansk outdoor clothing market. I know it is not the dead of winter over here yet, but it sure felt like it after an hour at that market. It was so cold that the normal vendors were packing up early and heading home.

Next, we went to the orphanage to pick up the girls and saw Andre. He is waiting for the remainder of his adoption paperwork to be finished up so that he can go to his home in the US. He will be heading to Kyiv in a couple of weeks. He is doing fine and is excited about his upcoming trip. Dave and Cathy, we told him that if he needs anything to call us. (Below: Luda, Andre, and Galina)



Once we got the girls back to the hotel, everything was pretty normal. However, Nastia, our 6 year old, decided that today would be the beginning of our testing period. Multiple times, she did things she wasn’t allowed to do and continued to do them after being told no in English and Russian. We had a battle of wills and our wills won this one. We are not naïve enough to think this war is over, but we won the first battle.


After we took the girls back, we made dinner in our room and invited Larissa over. During the course of dinner, Larissa received a phone call from her mother telling her that her Grandmother had just passed away. Needless to say, she was quite distraught.

Today, we set off bright and early for Vesivlika, Ukraine, the town where Galina and Nastia were born, via the taxi that ran out of gas the other night. We had to hand deliver a letter from the court with respect to our court appointment on Monday. To our surprise, the lady told us that according to her records, Galina and Nastia were not even classified as orphans. Apparently, the court, a building 2 minutes away, had not brought over the “Relinquishing of Parental Rights” to that office. But, God came through and we were able to use the documentation that Larissa was carrying in her briefcase. We then headed back to the hotel to get Larissa checked out of the hotel and onto a bus/train to Kyiv, where she was going to be with her family. It was hard to say goodbye to her since we have grown so close and gone through so much in a short week. We are still waiting for God to send another one to us for court on Monday. So, please pray for Larissa and her family and that we will be given another translator in time. Thank you for your prayers. An appropriate verse for today: Proverbs 19:21 – “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

God Bless,
Dan and Julie