Last Day in Amongst the Farms and Horsecarts

At least we hope it is the last day. We had the little party with Gideon's group last night and it was a big hit. You have never seen so much food disappear so quickly.

This morning we got up a little early to hit all the important offices when they opened. First the notary to sign our names again and pick up papers. Then the Civil Registration office to pick up the new birth certificates and adoption certificates. IT IS FINAL THEY ARE OURS! Now we just have to be able to get them out of this country and back into ours. When we finished that, Sveta, Viktor, and N headed off to Berdichiv to get N's second passport. Our prayer is that they will again be able to get it in one day (today) if not it will further delay our coming home.

Tomorrow we will pick up Gideon, put him in his new clothes, since he will take ABSOLUTELY nothing with him from the orphanage, I mean nothing. (I think there is a sermon in there somewhere, I'll have to think on it then pass it along to one of you preacher types.) We will put him in the van (which hopefully will go better than last time) and all of us will head out. First stop will be Zhytomer to take care of more passport issues for the 2 kids then on to Kiev. Getting to the internet maybe iffy over the next few days, but I promise we will get our flight info out.

Best case scenario we will leave here on Tuesday. Worst case scenario (I am willing to think about) we will leave on Thursday. Leaving on Wednesday is the most likely (At least we hope so.)

Pray for N, she seems very overwhelmed with everything. She has pulled back from us a little. I think she is afraid that it will all fall through and we will leave her behind. I can't imagine what she must be feeling.

N, got pretty upset with Sveta this morning because N's aunt had told her she was regestered in Novagrad-Volensky. N wanted Sveta to take the court judgement to someplace here to make sure that they released her from here. Sveta told her that she was not registered here, she was regestered in Berdichev, you could tell by the passport we had already received. N loudly told Sveta she was not right, her aunt had said she was registered here. N, almost crying in frustration, said if they didn't release her from here, they would not let her go to America. It made us feel better that even though she is pulling away from us a little she still desperately wants to come with us. (It was a very teenage moment :-)

Pray for Gideon. He seems very scared of completely new things (like the car ride) and he is in for nothing but new things. Pray that he will be able to receive comfort from us and embrace his new adventure.

Pray for us, that we will have patience, wisdom, love, ans strength to do the right things and say the right words. I have asked God a few times if he is sure he picked the right people for this job :-) As God has said he is sure we are trusting him for the strenght and grace to do the tasks before us.

Maj. Tommy, do you remember when we were in Japan and you said that people who think with the metric system judge things much differently, that instead of feet they thing centimeters? Well having ridden around in another metric country for 7 weeks, we would like to confirm you hypothesis. Centimeters, definately centimeters. [For the rest of you, that means that if they have 3 centimeters between them and the car next to them that is plenty of room, where as we English measurement people want 3 feet]

I guess we will close for now. We miss you all and are counting the days until we will FINALLY be home. Wow, is life going to be different.

Peace,
BLN&G