Invitation to Visit Svitlana

We had most of today to relax a bit ... it was so needed after the travel and the high emotion of seeing Svitlana's picture and profile yesterday. We finally got a good night's sleep. We went down the street to the store and bought some juice, a breakfast bread, and some bottled water. Then we came back, had breakfast, got our showers, and watched a couple episodes of The Office on DVD. Thank heaven for Steve Carrell! :-)

We met with our friends, EC and Heather, around noon and went out looking for lunch. We wound up walking around a lot and backtracking a bit. And it's BITTER cold here right now. I talked with several people and between my broken Russian and their broken English, we finally found our way to a really neat square where there were some restaurants ... including a TGI Friday's! We decided to eat there because once we go to the cities where the children are, there likely won't be any American food. Those places are only found in Kiev apparently. EC and Heather are so easy to talk with and we can't tell you how much we appreciate them and the gift from God that they were to us during our first few days here in Ukraine.

Later in the afternoon, we got the call from Serge that we needed to be at the SDA at 5:00 to sign the invitation and get the permission document to go see Svetlana. "Nicolai will pick you up around 4:00 and you will be first," he said. We had no idea what that meant, but when we got to the SDA, we figured it out. There was a small room and hallway crowded with a bunch of us adoptive parents and our Ukrainian guides waiting to get our official invitation and permission document to meet with our children. One couple was from Sweden, another from France, another from Guatemala, and of course, Kristi, me, EC and Heather were from the US. It was amazing hearing all of those languagues mixed together with Russian and Ukrainian. We particularly watched the lady from Guatemala. She and her husband looked about our age, but you could tell it was very emotional for her and she had to step outside once to cry and compose herself.

Although there were about a dozen couples waiting, our group of three couples (Serge is also working with the couple from Guatemala) were the first to go in. One of the other guides was a bit upset by us all going in first (I was able to understand a bit of the Russian being spoken), but Serge told them that all three couples were with him. I heard her apologize to him and then she left. We didn't say a word, but just showed the official our passports, signed a ledger, and got our papers. "Take the papers now and go wait in the car," was all Serge said to us. So we did!

We absolutely love Serge and have started to call him "Sarge" instead. He is SO good. He really knows his stuff, runs a very tight ship, and everyone at the SDA knows and respects him. He's an ex-Soviet paratrooper and knows how to take charge. He's simply amazing.

So, at 3:30 AM tomorrow morning, we need to meet Serge in front of our building and he personally is going to drive us 300 miles to Kharkov in Eastern Ukraine. It's a 5-6 hour drive. Our appointment to meet Svitlana is then around 8:30 AM. EC and Heather leave by train for Zaporizhzhya at 11:00 tonight. It's also East, but further South of where we're going. We will miss them a lot, but will keep in touch by cell phone.

Please pray for a safe trip for us and also pray that our meeting with Svitlana goes well and that the medical checks go well too.

We love you all and will keep you updated as we go along!