2 steps forward, 3 steps back

Yesterday was a nice, quiet Sunday.  We "did church" in our room yesterday morning.  It turned out to be very interesting.  We listened to two sermons, one by John McArthur and one by Tim Keller, both sermons having to do with the Holy Spirit.  (We tried to listen to Pastor Bart, but my IPad did not like quick time or flash something or whatever, so we could not hear it.). It was fascinating to listen to two really smart guys come at the same topic, and agree in all the important aspects, but approach the subject from different angles.  We didn't do much else.  I read the entire book, The Horse and His Boy, by C.S. Lewis.  

Today was a different story.  The short version is the passport office in Sumy wants more documentation on Julia's deceased mother.  We think they want her old passport, but who knows why.  Very frustrating.  This sets us back maybe two days minimum, but possibly more.  But some good news, sort of.  I do, in fact, have to send a raft of paperwork back to the immigration office in Missouri (instead of the embassy in Kiev), so I went to Andrew's house and printed the rest of the documents.  I gave this to Svetlana to mail from Kiev.  I got to meet Andrew's parents in the process, and show them pictures of our family. We also started the online process for the visa with the US embassy, so that is underway.

Now Libby's turn. Today Cosette invited me over to learn how to make borsch.  Every Ukrainian MUST know how to make this soup.  We have been here so long that I am feeling Ukrainian.  Andrew came to teach us, so i told them about Connie Bea Hope and Estelle.  Andrew was Connie Bea and oversaw the dicing and grating of many vegetables.  If Julia agrees, we will all go over tonight and eat it at the Fox's spacious apartment.  If I can find beets in Montgomery we will have it there, too.  It is so delicious, beautiful and nutritious.  Harosha!  (That means all is well.)

Libby's turn

We just watched our weekly fireworks show out the window.  A fun tradition here is to have fireworks at the end of the wedding reception.  The hotel where we are staying has a large room for parties and it has been in use every weekend we have been here, sometimes with mid-week celebrations,too, like birthday parties.  Ukrainians love to dance and sing and shoot fireworks.

When we walked down to the orphanage today to see Julia there was a group of teen-aged boys standing by the door.  They were so proud of themselves for saying hello in English . That was fun.  I feel like we are getting to know some people here in town.  I recognize a few of the kids from the orphanage and the guys the Foxes have introduced to us, Andrew and Vova .  It is starting to feel not so foreign now that it is almost time to leave.

Julia seems to be happy about coming home with us and is opening up more and is braving her English speaking more and more.  She can read it much more than I thought but I am not sure she understands what she reads.  But just being able to know the abc's is a big deal.  I wish I knew the Ukrainian/Russian abc's .  Then I would not feel so helpless and out of place.

Andy just brought me something that I love in Ukraine:  chocolate!  They have great chocolate.  Tonight we did not feel like going out into the cold for dinner, so we had a cozy meal of crackers with Laughing Cow cheese and instant soup.  We had salami and cheese sandwiches for lunch.  We are blessed to be able to buy food and have a warm room and a fun, nice place to stay.  The people in the hotel are very friendly,too.  There are two waitresses who are really nice to us and help us figure out how to order.  They probably call us the cabbage family because we order the coleslaw every time we eat there, which is often.  It reminds us of Linda McDaniel's amazing slaw.

While we are very anxious to get home and can get discouraged when things get bogged down and take longer than we thought they would we have had a very pleasant experience here and lots of fun.  We have had great fellowship with the Martins and the team they serve with in Odessa and with the Fox family and with the people at the baptist church where we worshiped last Sunday. We have enjoyed getting emails from folks at home.  We love that we can stay in touch most of the time and some of you have been so kind to write to us newsy updates from the home front . Yesterday on our way home from Sumy the sky was ablaze with the glory of God.  We watched the sun set for most of the trip and the sky got more and more beautiful as we watched.  Julia signed her new name for the first time and she said in English, "my name is Julia." We are so blessed!

Saturday Night

The party is cranking up downstairs in the cafe.  But up on the second floor, all is quiet.  Svetlana was not successful in getting the Romny passport office to come to work today, so she has headed back to Kiev for the weekend.  We have established the schedule, but I think this is very optimistic (ie, everything has to go right from here on out to meet this schedule).  Passport work Monday and Tuesday morning. Go to Kiev Tuesday afternoon.  Work on embassy paperwork and wait five days for passport.  This gets us out to the following Tuesday.  Wednesday, medical exam, Thursday and Friday embassy, then find the nearest exit and depart.  So even optimistically, we have two more weeks.  Pretty quiet day.  We did laundry, so it is hanging all over the room again, met with Svetlana, did some vital grocery shopping, saw Julia for 1-1/2 hours, messaged the kids, and got on FaceTime with Laura and Kate.

This is Libby dodging laundry to put on makeup.

Riding the rollercoaster

The weather forecasters had it right today - this was a cold one!  High was in the mid 30s, but wind chill was mid 20s.  Brrrrrrr.  The Foxes had their court date today, so we were going to watch the youngest while the older two went with their parents. Svetlana called saying the computers were working again,  and after court was done, Libby and I and Julia would go to Sumy.  Before very long, Sean called in a panic.  The judge would not let the children in court - could I come get them? So I walked across town, found the kids being watched by some office lady, walked them home in a very brisk wind.  Court seemed to take a while, and instead of giving the Foxes the decision on the spot, they had to come back at 2:00.  This delayed our Sumy plans, since Svetlana had to be at court.  We threw together some lunch, I picked up Julia at 1:00, back to the Foxes to watch the kids, court was completed (yeah - the Foxes win!), and it is approaching 3:00 before we get out of town.  We went back to the Registration building, where literally all that was required was for me to sign my name in one location, to the notary office again, for Julia to officially change her name ( I think), and then we headed to the Tax office ( a new step in the process).  I believe everyone has a tax number, and Julia has to have hers updated with her new name.  This is an essential part of getting her new passport (the one she doesn't need ever again once she leaves the country).  And guess what?  The tax office computers are down!  We cannot take this next step, the office is closed on the weekend, of course, and no telling if the computers will work on Monday.  So back in the taxi and head for home.  These multiple trips to Sumy are particularly irksome to me, since each taxi ride costs $125.  I'm never sure how many more trips are required.  I guess we'll see.  So . . . The 5 days to process the passport still have not started.  We are still trying to sort out the immigration paperwork confusion.  Sounds like I will be calling the embassy on Monday to see what is really required.  Hopefully this will be much ado about nothing.  There is a funny clash of Ukrainian culture happening tonight.  There has been an invasion of the hotel by a group of big wheel Orthodox priests and their entourage, at the same time as a loud and (we suspect) alcohol imbibing party going on in the cafe.  We are pleased to report that we set no fires today.  During lunch, just to kill time, I started writing out the alphabet and going over the sounds each letter makes with Julia.  She already has a good grasp of the letters and sounds, so that is very helpful.  On the trip, Libby prompted her to say, and she was able to say very clearly, "My name is Julia Elizabeth Perry."

Fire away!

As it turns out, we did not watch the Fox children last night.  Some Ukrainian men the Foxes have met found a heater for them, so they all slept well and warm and all at their apartment.  This proved to be a good thing, given the events of the morning.  I was first to go take a shower this morning.  Just as I was getting ready to get in, I heard Libby say, oh dear . . . . Oh Dear! . . . . ANDY!!!!  The tone of her voice was more urgent than her words, so I burst out of the bathroom in all my glory, and saw smoke rising from the corner of the room where she was standing.  Just as I got there, the towel she was standing over started burning.  Libby was not quite awake when she started to make her coffee today. She put water in the pot, plugged in the heating element, but left the element under the towel.  It apparently heats up pretty fast.  I took the water and dumped it on the fire, trying not to ruin the television which was right next to the fire.  We successfully saved everyone's life in the building and kept the inferno from spreading to the next city block.  I wish I had taken a picture of the towel.  It was neatly folded into fourths, so there were 4 burn holes in each quadrant of the towel.  We are fortunate we did not generate enough smoke to set off the fire alarm - it was cold today and I'm sure people would not have appreciated the crazy Americans forcing them outside early in the morning.  

We are now in the third day of the national notary computer shutdown, so we are at a dead standstill.  I am trying to work through another paperwork glitch with my immigration documents.  Andrew invited us to his apartment to use his computer, printer and scanner.  It was a huge help in moving us in the right direction.  Libby was excited to visit a real Ukrainian home.  Apartment complexes here are funny - the stairwell and entrance can be pretty ratty, but the homes are nice.  This apartment was very pleasant, spacious, and nicely taken care of.  Andrew graciously made us tea and served homemade cake his mother had made.  We saw Julia for about 1-1/2 hours today, with Svetlana, and explained what is going on and what is about to happen.  The stress of leaving her friends is starting to get to her, and she had a seizure today.  It would be real helpful if we could get through this current stage and get on to Kiev and then home.  To end the day, Svetlana and we had dinner with the Foxes.  We had Ukrainian fish prepared for all of us in a very small kitchen, and everything turned out great. Tomorrow is their big day in court, so they are both nervous and excited.  We are watching their youngest for them during court.

A busy day

We made our mad dash over to Sumy to work on several important documents.  If you are a citizen of Ukraine, you have to have an internal passport as well as an international passport.  The internal passport has things like your home address, vocation, where you are licensed, etc.  We have to redo Julia's because her name is changing, so even though she will only be Julia Perry for a few days in Ukraine, she still needs a new internal passport.  This is a 5-day or so process when things are working.  We also went to generate a new birth certificate with her new name, and Libby and me listed as her parents.  There was also some document which needed the services of a notary, plus both of the above actions have to be notarized.  Unfortunately, everything is NOT working.  It seems there is a national notarizing computer system that has been down all of yesterday and today.  No one knows when it will be fixed.  Nothing we need can be processed until the system comes back up.  So while our trip was successful in that we met everyone we needed to meet, we came back empty-handed.  The trip itself was a hoot.  We rode in a taxi, so there were 5 adults in a car that could not have been bigger than a civic.  Driving style was both similar and different than Stas.  We did not go nearly as fast, which was a relief, but he took a much more relaxed and casual approach to passing vehicles.  He just went whenever he wanted, whether something was coming or not.  So it was not uncommon for us to be three across - the car we were passing, the oncoming car, and us.  It's a good thing our car was small!  We did not take up much room.

Tonight will be a new adventure.  The Fox's two older kids are sleeping here tonight.  Their new apartment is not working well for sleeping arrangements (not enough beds, and no heat) so we will keep the two oldest kids so they can focus on their youngest.  We'll see how it goes.  I need to remember to not be a grandpa (not feeding them sugar before bedtime, and definitely not sticking a suction cup toy to my head, but that's another story) and get back into daddy mode in a big hurry.

Back on the clock . . . Almost

Today turned into a busy day.  The exciting news is the hotel turned on the heat.  I guess October 1st is the magical day.  It was so warm, I had to turn the valves off to the radiators.  As evening approached, the heat got turned back off, so I need to learn the schedule to make sure we get heat when it is available.  The Foxes came over this morning just a little cold and weary.  The kids didn't sleep well, so they weren't their usual cheery selves.  But we warmed them up, and tried to amuse the kids.  We shared lunch with them today - Cosette made homemade soup.  What a treat!  We went to see Julia at 3:00 but she had to wash clothes.  It seemed a lot of kids were having to do work, so we only spoke to her for a few minutes.  Then we had this big, spontaneous party in our room.  The Foxes came back over, and brought an American Peace Corp English teacher, who is 24, then Andrew came and marveled at all the Americans in Romny.  As we were getting ready to go to supper, Svetlana showed up, so we had quite a group headed to the cafe.  One other side note.  I finally got Sean Fox to take me to the store that sells individually wrapped truffles.  Oh my goodness!  You cannot BELIEVE how good these are!  If you are very nice to me, and bribe me with obscene amounts of money, I might consider sharing a piece of one with you.  You really ought to fly over here and get a bag of them.

Libby's turn

Please pray for the Fabulous Fox family.  They have been here for more than a month and have been a great blessing to us.  We have watched them face trials without complaint, always trusting The Lord .  They have the gift of hospitality and welcome people so easily.  Today Cosette magically prepared a wonderful lunch in a tiny kitchen with crazy appliances and made it look so easy.  They need our prayers for the rest of the adoption to go smoothly.  Their kids are amazing, too.  In the month they have been here they have moved 5 times!!!! But they are happy and do not complain.  They are loving and giving and display the gospel well.  Praise The Lord .