Hooray! We are past the first hurdle!

Wednesday, November 6

Had a leisurely morning at the apartment and then headed out about 1:30 to the Metro. We actually found our way with no problem to the SDA building (we've only taken taxi's before). It was one Metro ride and maybe a mile of walking?  (Hard to tell on the walking part.) Got there early enough to eat lunch at the pizza place across the street.  We don't necessarily care for the meat they put on their pizzas, so we got a cheese and grape pizza.  Don't laugh..it was good...we even ordered a second one!  They only put 2 grapes on the whole pizza. lol  Also ordered what they had listed as a "'Greek salad", but it wasn't like our Greek salads at all.  None the less, it was yummy with tasty vegetables and dressing and some kind of wonderful cheese. It started to rain while we were in the restaurant, but we were only across the street from the building.  We wanted to be the first in line to receive our referral letter, so we headed over there about 3:30.  We were the only ones for about 25 minutes.

The lovely waiting room on the first floor of the SDA building.

 

Soon it was filled with American couples, 4 of which we had met on Facebook prior to coming to Ukraine. It's fun to run into people and hear their stories, rejoice in their victories and pray for their concerns. We got into the office a few minutes after 4:00, got our letter and came outside to it raining cats and dogs.  The street outside of the office was a swift running river of water.  Halyna tried to help us maneuver around the cars, so we wouldn't be stepping into big puddles, but I still managed to get both feet and pant legs completely soaked.

Our cab was waiting and we took off for Children's Services before they closed at 5:00.  Traffic downtown was very slow, but we got there right at 5:00pm.  Not exactly sure what we did there, but it only lasted maybe 15 minutes and we were back into our waiting cab and headed for Father's House.  When we got there we were taken into an office and paperwork was signed and stamped and shuffled and copied, etc.  Liliya came in and wrote a letter stating that she wanted to be adopted by us.

 

After everything was over, we were invited to Liliya's family's flat.  She served us hot tea and candy and wafer cookies.  We had a fun, short visit.  Raya, the orphanage director called and said she had some friends that were leaving by car to go to Kiev and asked if we wanted to ride with them.  We decided a car ride was much more desirable than a 45 minute bus ride and a 3/4 mile walk in the rain!  So thankful for that and so thankful for how God has brought us this far.  Tim and I both said "wow! so this is what it's like when you adopt". Last year, we didn't make it this far, even though we were here for  weeks.