November 15, 2007

After an uneventful train ride, we arrived in Zap at 6:30 am. Before we left the train, we heard a female voice on the train yelling, “Kim, Kim”. I am always so glad to hear my name when we are going somewhere without a translator!!! It was Nina and Yana to meet us and take us to our apartment. It was wonderful to see these 2 friends. Fortunately, they had been warned by Sasha that we brought everything including the kitchen sink, so they had 2 cars to take us to the apartment. We were able to unpack and shower. Our apartment is very spacious with very large rooms: 2 bedrooms, den, bathroom, and kitchen. Our translator, Denis will be living with us while we are here. Our biggest challenge in the apartment so far is how to shower without getting water all over the bathroom (there is no shower curtain).
Denis arrived and off we were to the orphanage with driver, Vlad. He is one of the few large Ukrainians that I have seen and is almost Bobby’s size. He does not speak English, but gestured to me about Bobby’s size and muscles. He seemed impressed.
We made a couple of stops on our way to the orphanage, including picking up the inspector. Her job seems much like a DHR social worker, removing children from unsafe situations and making decisions with regard to their welfare. We were told that she would go with us today to take part in our conversation with Katya and Sergey and determine if these 2 children want us to adopt them. I had never thought about the possibility that they might not want to be adopted or might not want us to be their parents. I had not seen them in a year, and Bobby had never met them before today.
We arrived at the orphanage, a large stone building, where it was like a home-coming. We saw kids at most windows, waving at us. In the hallway, kids were running to see us, even kids I did not know. Do you think they know what visitors; couples in particular, are here for? Without a doubt!!! Very soon, we were greeted by kids that we knew from summer hosting programs and those that I had met last October. Also were 3 of our children: Katya, Sergey, and Sasha. This all seems unreal. Word travels fast at the orphanage and soon Yulia came to see us. After many hugs, kisses, and greetings, we were invited into the cafeteria for lunch with the orphanage director, Larissa. She is a wonderful hostess and always takes the time to feed everyone that arrives. Denis translated for us our conversations with the kids and with Larissa. Larissa did not stay to eat with us, but left for other business. Yulia’s adoption status is unclear and we are hoping that there has been a mistake and that she can be adopted at some point. Denis, the inspector, Nina and Larissa will work on this for us. We told Yulia about the problems with her documents and that we will be unable to take her and Sasha with us this visit. We knew that this would be the most difficult time of our visit. How do you tell a 14 year old that you can not take her or her brother? How do you tell her that you will take 2 other children? It was extremely difficult and very emotional. With this being done, we now had to talk to Sergey and Katya, who we had already seen in the hallway. Bobby and I, Denis, and the inspector were shown to Larissa’s office where she talked to the kids for a long time about what life would be like in America. They were then asked if they would like for us to adopt them. Sergey is very calm and reserved and said, “Da” (yes, in Russian). Katya said, “Da” but was so excited she was trembling. We all finished our conversation, took a few pictures and left Larissa’s office. As you can imagine, Yulia and Sasha were still very upset and we tried to comfort them as best we could. Katya and Sergey also joined in on comforting Sasha and Yulia and for several hours the 6 of us spent time together taking pictures, laughing, talking, and enjoying being together. These children all want to be together and part of the same family. They are bonded to each other already. We even spent time in prayer with Denis and all of our children to pray for our situation, for Yulia’s documentation, and for peace and comfort with this difficult time. Hopefully we will know more by Monday about Yulia. The day ended so well, but was an overwhelming day, to say the least. There are so many beautiful kids in this orphanage (about 350) and they all want and need some love and attention. If only we can touch each one of them in some way while we are here.