Precious in His Sight

Sasha holding a kitten




Christian fellowship in the Ukraine




A Ukrainian family who is adopting, talking to Irina





Lusa enjoying swinging






Sasha's last day of driving taxi






This little boy kept coming over from another groupa and giving us hugs...so cute!




Lusa's groupa---they are so cute









Tomorrow we have our court again at 10 am Ukraine time...
they were unable to get someone to respond to send the necessary form from Lusa's birth city Odessa on Friday, so a friend our translator who lives there will go to do it first thing Monday morning to get it faxed to the court hourse before 10 am....

if that all goes well, we are told that court will only take a few minutes and that we will not have to redo everything from court last Friday.
Please pray it goes smoothly and they will have what is needed.

We are scheduled now to fly out of Kiev on Wednesday morning around 11 am, lay over overnight in Amsterdam, and home Thursday evening around 9:30 pm. We are very excited and looking forward to returning to our family at home...we just realized that if we'd been able to leave as we'd previously planned, we would've been home an hour ago (when I wrote this Monday morning)
It has been challenging here in some ways as it feels like we have been here for so long and the days go slowly. Yet there are blessings....

yesterday we had the privaledge of going to a church fellowship at a family's house in a nearby village. OUr friends asked John to give the message and he was able to share about our adoption as children of God and how we christians are called to care for the orphan and the widow. As he explained (much better) Taras, who is dependant on us for all his care is a constant reminder of how we are totally dependant upon God for His grace and salvation....yet he loves us and provides the way through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, and makes us His children!

We enjoyed meeting the Ukrainian christians at the service and trying the food they had there...a melon we don't see in the states (tastes like honeydew but is smalll and yellow on the outside), compote (drink made by boiling fruit, water and sugar),crackers, and a pancake that you wrap around a sweet pear mix.
We also enjoyed seeing the home and its beautiful flower gardens. There were 2 tiny kittens, a couple cats, chickens, dogs and a big vegetable garden with many fruit trees..peaches and plums and apples. It was very hot today--the hottest day yet so we were thankful again to have air condition in our apartment.

Our visits went well yesterday. IT may be the last time--depending on what we need to do today. If our power of attorney (giving John ability to take the kids home on my behalf when I am not there) we brought from the US is enough, we can go staight to Kiev tonight on a bus. If it is not, we will need to go to Odessa today to find a notary, as the notaries here are on vacation...then we'd take the bus or train to Kiev after that from Odessa.

Lusa was a little challenging with eating...spitting the soup out ...but when the caregiver came and talked to her and fed her, she did the same thing to her and boy did she scold her "Lusa Lusa, no, no, no!" and shaking her finger at her...the rest I didn't understand I know this will improve once we are home...and I can't wait to give her more things than soup. She loves kisses now and squeals when she gets one. Taras has been taking his bottles well and his bedsores are nearly healed now.

So today after court we will pack and clean up here and either head to Odessa this afternoon, or wait to go to Kiev tonight, Lord willing!
Thank you for praying for us. Paka!