It Goes On, and On, and On

It is a grey evening in Mariupol. Maybe it will rain. It has been raining a bit inside of us for about 3 days now. You know the saying about the best laid plans. . . Today we had planned once again to go to the village to get the birth certificates. We arrived at the office building to pick up the 16 finished copies of the amendment that were to be attached to the 16 packets of the final court decree. It was discovered there was a small error in one statement in the amendment. Tanya and Mark and I had to drive back to the court building. The judge who needs to sign a corrected amendment was not there and was not scheduled to be back until late in the afternoon. So, another day to wait. We're tired. The girls are tired. We're all ready to go home.

The amendment is now supposed to be signed and ready by tomorrow at 8:00am. Tanya will pick it up and take it back to the office building where it is to be attached to the other copies and finalized. We are praying fervently that there are no other problems. If that part all goes well, our plan is to load all our luggage and the girls into Tanya's car tomorrow and all of us will go to the village to get the birth certificates, then on to Donetsk to get the passports. If all that goes well, we plan to buy train tickets in Donetsk and leave about 7:00 on an overnight train to Kiev. The timing will be critical and we have a slim margin for error if we are going to do this. But we know God reveals Himself best in these kinds of situations. At the same time, if it is His will that we stay here a while longer, we are willing to wait and be patient until it is in His will that we go.

The benefit of trying to get to Kiev by Friday morning is that we can begin the process on Friday, rather than wait until Monday. We will have to take the girls to a hospital for medical tests as soon as we arrive in Kiev. Then we go to the Embassy to apply for a visa. If we can get that done on Friday, then we'll have the weekend in Kiev to relax and do some sightseeing. By Tuesday it should all be finished and perhaps, PERHAPS, we can be on a plane home by Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. We are all so ready.

Today we had to deal with Zhanna's attitude a bit, but praise God, He gave us words to speak, and it turned out beautifully. All four of us walked to Amstore one last time to purchase food for our day tomorrow. Zhanna didn't want to go, but we insisted. She put her shoes on and walked out the door ahead of us. She kept walking and wouldn't look back, even when we called her name. Mark and I and Ella stopped walking and told Zhanna to come back. At first she just kept walking, but we held our ground, so she turned around and came back. I told her, in the best words I could find, that she wasn't acting very nice yesterday and today, and that needs to change. I told her that Mark and I are doing the best we can, and we need her help. I asked her if she understood. She said yes, but still seemed a little "put out." However, we kept walking and she walked with us. After we had walked for a little while, I told her, "Zhanna, I'm going to say one more thing, and then I'm going to drop it. We love you and Ella very much, that's why we are here in Ukraine. This adoption thing is hard! We are all tired and ready for it to be over. But we love you so much, or we wouldn't be doing this! So we all just need to work together and help each other as a family! We don't have the words to use yet to talk about feelings. That will come. But for now, we just need to be kind and love each other. We love you and we will never leave you!" I hugged her. She seemed to understand very well what I was saying. After that she slowly softened and relaxed and by the time we got to Amstore it was all good. I thank God so very much for His wisdom and His words that can cross the barriers of language as we struggle together to become a family.

I promised to make a list of Blessings and Hardships. I think God has shown me through the last few days, especially, that truthfully, our hardships are a lot less severe than we think at the time, and our blessings are much more plentiful. Yes, throughout the past year, the hardest part of this process has been waiting, waiting, waiting, more waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. It is hard to wait. But we are instructed to "wait on the Lord." We understand that His ways are best, and He indeed wants us to learn patience. We are willing. So, I've just narrowed down all the hardships to that one single nugget of an idea - waiting. It has taught us so much.

Our blessings are abundant! God has grown us so much this past year. That is the best blessing. God has given us two new daughters. Fantastic! God has shown us how blessed we are with Nathan and Annie and what wonderful young people they are to be willing to open their home and their hearts and share their parents with two new little sisters. We are so proud of them. We are so blessed with Mark's parents and all the love they give us and our family all the time. They can't wait to be "Babushka" and "Didushka."

We are so blessed by our loving and wonderful church family. They have given so much to us during this past year, and for the 23 years before that. We wouldn't be here without them. They will welcome the girls with open arms and love them beyond reason. I'm so blessed to be part of a terrific, supportive staff of a wonderful Christian School. They, and my students, and their families have prayed for me and Mark and the girls for a year. I can't wait for them all to meet Zhanna and Ella. We are so blessed with extended family members who are lovingly supportive of this adoption. We have been incredibly blessed by so many giving financial support. We couldn't have done this without God's abundant blessing coming through the generous support of other people.

We have been blessed to be in Ukraine and to get to know and love so many of the people here. We have family here now. We will always love them. We have been blessed to be here this long and experience this culture as a native would. We love it, in spite of the differences and the difficulties. That's how you feel about your home. We've been blessed to stay at the TLC and to be served by such loving Christians here. We've been blessed by Tanya, who has practically run herself ragged taking care of our needs. We are thankful for Vanya, who has taken care of many details that we don't even know about. We are blessed to be thinking about going home to the comforts and familiarites there, and to introduce our girls to everything good and bad that is America. In spite of its problems and issues, it is a great nation, thanks be to God. In spite of the rain falling on our spirits this week, we must say, in everything, we are BLESSED!

Pray for us. We hope to be on a train to Kiev tomorrow night. We hope to be home by the middle of next week, if the Lord wills. We love you all and thank you.

In Christ,
Dawn and Mark