Meeting with Viktoria and Borys

We arrived at Olga’s office and were ushered in right away. Lyudmila explained our day to her and Olga exclaimed that it’s typical, but God must have wanted us here today. We then sat down to some business and she asked for the infamous letter! She then told us how this would all work. She needed to know for sure that we wanted to continue with the adoption, we would then hear what they know about Viktoria and Borys and their background and then V and B (nicknames) would come in to see us, and Olga would have a talk with them. She needed to officially hear from them that they wanted to go to us and our family, in order to proceed with preparing documents. This would be followed by a conversation with the orphanage doctor about their physical condition, vaccinations, etc. Then we would have time to talk with their teacher about their education. We could ask any questions that we would like and even we could ask later if questions came up. Olga told us that no question was considered to be stupid.

We heard from Olga about the children’s background and the reason for their parents losing parental rights. They had come to the orphanage in March 2000 because their grandmother is an invalid and couldn’t care for them. So they arrived at the ages of 4 and 3. They are both good students and very industrious. Time and space right now doesn’t allow me to go into too many details, but we will share more later about what we are learning about them. Both of them were dressed really sharp when they came in. Bora wore a little black suit without a tie. Vika was wearing a beautifully knitted sweater. They were beaming with smiles. Then they were asked to leave and wait in the other office. We had our time with the doctor and then the teacher. Olga went out for a bit and we found out later that Vika had been crying. You can imagine how hard it is when your friends have been the other kids in the orphanage. She was nervous about leaving them, but torn too because she wants to be with us. Olga told her that this is the best choice because none of these children can stay here forever. Only a few more years and they’d be out on their own in some way. They came back in a little later and the question of name change came up. We discussed the options. Borys after hearing Olga tell him, "Now Borys, what kind of American name is that! No one has the name 'Borys' in America!" firmly decided to lose that name completely. Viktoria decided to keep it as her middle name. Once the judge approves the adoption, we will introduce you to the children!

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.

Overnight Train to Odessa – Fast Car to Belgorod

Our hosts in Kiev were a delight to stay with. Their hospitality was fantastic! After the embassy visit we walked through the city to their home. The old town sits on a high hill and the embassy is on the slope of that hill. On our way back we stopped at an indoor market. It was quite a mixture of booths with everything from butchers and cheese sellers to vegetable, fruit and flower sellers. We picked up a nice flower basket for Irina and went on our way while we noted the possible places to change money. The people and government of Ukraine need prayer. They had a bank collapse back in the mid-nineties where all deposits and withdrawals were frozen. Nobody could get money. It helped them survive. Now with the current crisis in government related to the disagreement between their president (pro-western) and prime minister (pro-eastern), the effect looks very similar to the last time. The $ and Euro continues to get stronger here and that’s effecting the banking and credit system. They have again frozen the deposits and withdrawals. People are afraid to put their money in banks, but keeping the money at home is not safe either because it potentially makes them a target. Please pray for all of this.

We received our referral letter and adoption dossier on the way to the train station. A very fun taxi driver named Misha took us to our facilitator and then to the train station. Yulia gave us our tickets and then the dossier saying, “These are your adoption documents. They are extremely important. You can lose yourselves, your luggage or whatever, but losing these documents will severely delay this adoption.” We still have our documents, our luggage and ourselves! 

Misha took us directly to the station and escorted us to our room on the train. We slept a bit better on this train. It was a faster train, which meant more movement, but that seemed to be better than stopping 10 or more times. We arrived in Odessa at 6am and were met almost as soon as we stepped out by a taxi driver named Gene (pronounced “Je-Ne”) hired to bring us to Belgorod. He was the fastest taxi driver we’ve had yet! Gene took us to Belgorod. In this part of the country we are near the Black Sea. The countryside and villages are much like our days in Czech, except that the buildings and homes are much more run down. There are farms and fields and there was lots of fog. We traveled over a bridge that spans a bay of the Black Sea. The bridge is the kind that has a center section that lifts straight up for ships to pass under it. After another 20 minutes we were in Belgorod by 7:30am. Gene tried calling some people but found nobody answering. Possibly it was too early. We eventually spoke with Tasha, the lawyer involved with adoptions and with our facilitators. She encouraged us to get to our hotel at the Christian Clinic in town and then go with Gene to meet with Lyudmila, our translator. We didn’t know exactly where the Christian Clinic was though as we had only a phone number and nobody was answering. But, when I was speaking with Kim about it and said the words “Christian Clinic”, Gene piped up and said, “Christian Clinic?”. The next thing we knew we were on our way through Belgorod. We arrived at this medical facility, which has rooms upstairs. We then left our luggage, took our backpacks and documents and went with Gene to find Lyudmila. Gene picked her up at her home and then we went to the department of education. Here we were to receive a letter of referral in exchange for our letter of referral from the SDA in Kiev. This would allow us to go to the orphanage.

Big Help and Encouragement at US Embassy

On Tuesday, the day we received our letter of referral from the SDA, we decided to take a chance and see if there were papers that Robert (and I?) could sign now rather than making another trip to Kiev at the end. In this way we’d be able to save money and since timing might be crucial later it would be a big help. I called the US Embassy and spoke with the adoptions department. They thought it was a good idea to come in and sign the documents, which I will completely fill out later on during the final phase. This was a very encouraging time, because the staff at the embassy (some Americans, some Ukrainians) knew of our case and assured us they will do all they can to shorten the expected time frame for getting the waiver. They also noted to us that there is a strong possibility that HIV will soon be taken off the list of medical reasons that require this waiver. However, it has not happened as of yet.

We did find out though that we had missed a crucial form related to the eventual waiver application for B when his visa will be rejected. We misunderstood the form, thinking that it was something to be filled out related to medical authorities after our arrival with the kids in the US. Thus, we, family and friends in the States are trying to get this form filled out with the proper signatures of a pediatrician and state health officer even while Robert is still here. We sometimes feel we’ve had a big financial part of Fed Ex this last year!  We left the embassy much more confident and encouraged. We then began to prepare for our departure Tuesday night to Odessa and Belgorod.