Anger Management

Step by Step Family Matters

Just after we finished writing this last blog at the Japanese restaurant, our wifi was discontinued. We saw on the news that some cables were cut (possibly by an earthquake or something else) under the Mediterranean Sea that may have interrupted internet service to Asia, Europe and some of Africa??? We have no idea what that’s about, but we will try to post it again tomorrow.

Early Sunday morning Casey and Rebecca were awakened by the sounds of hard rainfall and loud meowing. We knew our little adopted kitten, Sneakers, had to be very cold and wet, so we let him into our apartment! We knew Bill would not be thrilled with this decision, but he was so cute and it was wet and cold outside- we just had to.
Sneakers playing outside our apartment. I'm starting to think that Rebecca and Rachel will try to smuggle him back to the States.

He played in our living room and found some plastic bags that he liked to jump on. We found out that, like our other cats, he likes bread and cheerios!

Later that day we discussed our options regarding the sister. Then we ate breakfast and we decided we needed to have some church. We gathered our family and sang and prayed and shared meaningful scriptures. We had a communion meal of sorts and I think we all felt unity in our LORD once again.

At 12:30 Bill and Rebecca along with our adoption agency representative from Kiev (and a translator) piled into our van/taxi and we went to see our little guy to talk with him about his sister. We were not surprised that the Kiev rep. gave lots of instructions to our new unofficial translator on what he could and could not say and translate between us. As she clearly put it, “you are from an open society and this is a closed society; do not be offended.” It is frustrating not to be able to be in control of our communications with everyone around us. It makes the ‘Freedom of Speech’ and the concept of ‘Due Process’ seem all the more precious. Having zero control and virtually zero influence on this process is an incredible lesson on patience. As Americans we are so used to being in control of our environment and being able to influence circumstances for change. We are absolutely not in control of anything here AND God is absolutely in charge. He is sovereign; He is perfect; He is omniscient; whatever happens here we accept our LORD will use it for good. It is a lesson we are starting to learn in a brand new way.

We arrived at the orphanage and we were told that our guy was napping. Apparently, all of the children rest for 2 hours each afternoon. The orphanage workers woke him up and brought him to us. We had a little bit of play time while most of the adults talked to give him some time to wake up. Once he was alert and could pay some attention, we directly relayed to our little guy our intentions to adopt him. We were able to tell him that we would be talking again with his sister and that we have no control of the process or the amount of time it could take for him to officially become a part of our family.

The Kiev Representative asked him if he would rather stay in Ukraine and live with his sister or live with our family. He said that he wanted to go with us and that he would not stay with the sister.

We wanted to try to understand the relationship he has with his sister. The impression we got was that they are not very close. All in all it was a fairly short time of playing mixed with talking about some serious stuff. We are still trying to build back the sort of relationship that we had with him this past summer; kids spell ‘Love’ with ‘Time’. We were also told that we would not be allowed to take him off orphanage grounds again because there is a law prohibiting such visits. We were only able to take him out for dessert that one time because it was a holiday.

When Bill and Rebecca returned from the orphanage the whole family along with our Kiev Representative went to a nice restaurant called Reflection. It had rained earlier in the day, but by the time we were ready for our walk to the restaurant it had cleared and we actually had a very nice, not too cold, late afternoon walk. It was the most western meal we’ve had since arriving in Ukraine. They even had fajitas on the menu, but we’re not sure what it would have looked like; no one had the guts to order that. That’s probably the best bet for our Christmas dinner if we spend Christmas in Chernitvsi (no wifi access, though- bummer!). Later we found out it is one of the five best restaurants in the whole country (at least according to our guide book).

At the end of our meal our Kiev Representative left because she was tired; but we were joined by the translator who came to the States with both cultural camps and another family here, the Darnborough Family! We had a good, informative, fun time of talking and fellowshipping with them. PS, the desserts at Reflections are not to be missed!

On the way back to our apartment, our translator friend guided us to the city center square to the New Year’s Tree. It’s several stories high and was decorated like we would decorate a Christmas tree with lots of lights. It’s very beautiful and it gave us some Christmas Spirit in this country that celebrates Christmas in a way that is quite different from what we normally experience. As we continued our walk home we stopped in at the Japanese restaurant again for some ‘tea’ (read wifi) so we could check emails and post the latest blog.

These photos were taken within seconds of each other. This is usually how we look when we're at the Japanese restaurant.We had a quiet evening thinking about our upcoming ‘charge’ into the Adoption minefield the next morning.

Monday dawned sunny and relatively ‘warm’. As I write this Monday has just dawned in California but we have wrapped up our dinner and it is dark here. For the third day in a row, we enjoyed eggs, ham, bread and coffee at our apartment. One of the other families encouraged us to work hard to have a hardy breakfast because, with the uncertainty of the adoption daily schedule of events, you never know when or if you will get another meal.

It was a quiet day waiting for a meeting with the sister that never materialized. We walked to the grocery store to get fruit for our little guy and his sister, and later to the famous university here where we admired some very Russian looking architecture (apparently most of the buildings were built over 100 years ago for the Orthodox Church leaders). We learned tonight that our guy’s orphanage director has requested a meeting with our guy and his sister together in order to move things forward. We are hopeful and again this is all out of our control (sense a theme?). Our facilitators think we may have a good sense of which way things will go by the end of the day Wednesday, Christmas Eve.

As we had our family church service yesterday and shared scripture and prayer, we reminded one another of the need to pray continuously. We have so much to be thankful for over the last 10 days. We have experienced kindness by many, mild weather for this part of the world, support in the orphanage community for what we are trying to accomplish, wonderful fellowship with the other families that are here working on their adoptions but most of all, we have experienced such tremendous prayer support and messages from all of you back home!!! We will never be able to express to you how important you have been or how many times we think you have made a key difference for us. We continue to think about what God is doing here, and maybe we will never fully understand; but He has blessed us richly already in so many ways during our time here.

Some of the family playing at the younger orphanage where we got to spend good quality time with 4 of the children we met in the summer.

Another view of Chernivtsy. We think it looks like a movie set. We understand that the whole city was recently repainted for the City's 600 birthday.Using the wifi at the Greek restaurant- the only other place we can get online in this city.