The Lord Moves in the Heart of Kings!

We had come early to the Department of Education, but it was an arranged meeting for this day by our adoption lawyer and facilitators. The woman in charge met us but said to Lyudmila that we could not receive our letter until she had a notarized letter stating that Lyudmila could represent us. It had to state that Lyudmila could receive this letter for us. Lyudmila told her that this was irregular and that going to the notary was not necessary. She then told Lyudmila that she couldn’t help us until she had something from the notary. Lyudmila came to us and told us what was happening and didn’t know if maybe the law had changed. She made phone calls and eventually it was decided to visit a notary and talk it over. This lady told us that it was not necessary also and that she had no reason to write the letter or the proper codes to place in this notary letter to make it work, so she would not do it. With more phone calls to the lawyer and facilitators in Kiev they decided to get on the phone to the SDA in Kiev. Meanwhile we needed to wait, so we took a walk to a nearby park. On the way Lyudmila took us to a little Christian bookstore. It was practically the size of our walk in closet, but it was completely full of books and materials. We went to a park and took some time to get to know our translator.

Lyudmila is a pastor’s wife. Her husband pastors the Evangelical Presbyterian church in town. She shared with us that she has been a translator for many years, but before she was a believer she translated for missionaries at all kinds of speaking events. Eventually, after translating the gospel message hundreds of times, she realized her need for forgiveness and the Savior! She has 2 children who are 19 and 10 years old. Her daughter is studying economics in Odessa.

While Kim and Lyudmila talked further I began a couple of pictures. We also watched as an older man kept taking little children for rides on his two little electric powered cars. He walked alongside and took them all over the park. He had a little police car and an off road type and grandmother’s and mothers paid him about 75cents for a 5 – 10 minute ride. After about 2 hours of this we decided it was time to go. The Department of Education office was only open till 12:30 according to the sign. Lyudmila called Gene and he took us home. Lyudmila went to teach an English class. After arriving at the clinic we slept for a couple of hours. Then we decided to make a call to the Kiev facilitator, Marina. We told her of our take on the situation and she immediately started telling us that it’s time for action. She told us to contact Lyudmila and get Gene to take all of us back to this office and tell that woman that we’ve come for our letter and that Lyudmila is just our translator and that a notary letter is not necessary. She had been in contact with the SDA in Kiev and they had confirmed this. So that’s what we did. We arrived at 3:00pm. Robert knocked on the door and then opened it. Both women looked shocked, but allowed us in. Robert explained that we were there for our letter because we have a letter from the SDA and that Lyudmila is just our translator and that we are representing ourselves. She asked for our papers and passports and then a total transformation took place. Her assistant started preparing our new letter, while she began to smile and ask us about our children (have we met them, their ages, etc.) She instructed us that the letter needed to be signed by an official in another building and that we’d have to wait about a half hour while she personally takes the letter to get the signature. We told her we’d take a walk and Lyudmila took us in the direction of the building from which this lady would have to get the signature. As soon as we walked out of the office and the door shut, Lyudmila told Kim she’d never seen anything like that before; that was amazing! We spent some time talking at another park. There was a fountain here and someone had put detergent in the water so it looked like a great big bubble bath! Next to it were some young guys with about 5 mechanical “ponies”. Again they gave children rides on these. The seat and the stirrups worked to make the pony (which had wheels) look like it was galloping along!

The half hour turned out to be a whole hour, but we had some good conversation with Lyudmila. She told us that Belgorod is 2500 years old. It has a huge fortress that was built in the 1300s and had withstood many invasions until the Ottoman Turks took it. They had it for 300 years. While we stood there Lyudmila saw several of her students and received phone calls from others. One called saying that he and the other 3 friends had all passed their big test. This meant that the 4 of them, members of a jazz band, would be able to get the job on a cruise ship as part of the entertainment.

Eventually the lady came out and handed us our letter. We told her thank you and immediately called Marina. She told Lyudmila to call Gene and get over to the orphanage as fast as possible because Olga, the orphanage director was waiting for us. We later found out it was her day off, but she had come in that day and waited because she was expecting us to arrive and wanted to get things rolling right away. Gene picked us up and he truly sped us over to the orphanage offices.