January 21- Wednesday

January 21 Wednesday
Wow, what an eventful day.
We started the day with breakfast with the Epperlys, The translator, and Our facilitator. Same buffet place and we had some sort of wonton-type thing with cabbage inside, covered with steamed onions and a dollop of sour cream. It was very delicious. Elijah ate some sort of turnover. Then we bade the Epperly’s off to their appointment. They are looking for a son between two and four. We prayed for them. They came back saying they chose a child to go see. He was the first one that was shown to them, and four years old. He’s got blonde hair. They learned that they would also be able to get the paperwork from the SDA to be able to go today. They were having a hard time getting a train ticket, though. So, we sat around a little waiting for our appointment. We had packed all of our stuff up while the Epperlys were at their appointment just in case. After it was time to go we walked up the hill to the SDA. It is very non-descript for a place that can change your fate forever. We were about 10 minutes early so we waited outside for them to open from lunch break. After being called inside, we sat down on the couch and got Elijah settled with his trains. She asked about our family and about the children we wanted to adopt. Then she proceeded to show us files. She first showed us three sibling groups of three each all healthy. We weren’t going to go after the one with a 13 year old girl—we were only approved for up to 12 years old. We didn’t want to look further into the one with an 11 year old boy as we think Caleb would have a hard time with that one. That left the one with 3 girls but didn’t get much inspiration off that one. While we were looking and debating, the lady left for a few minutes and came back with a sibling group of four girls. The oldest was 8, the youngest 4 (the right ages). They had parental rights terminated in October 2007 (not really very long in the orphanage, barely long enough even to be available for international adoption). The mother was very young--- 16 when she had the first girl (good news for fetal alcohol syndrome).
The lady jokingly said that if we didn’t choose them she wouldn’t speak to our facilitator the next time he came in--- they were all young AND girls. For some reason they got it into their head that we ONLY wanted girls. It didn’t matter because it was very clear to us that these girls were the ones that we were going to visit. Both Keith and I felt it. In their pictures they were shaved bald (probably lice control) but probably had dark hair and dark eyes… very beautiful. We didn’t even take our whole hour. We were told they probably wouldn’t get our paperwork done that night to be able to go, but to check anyway.
At 5:00 the translator went off to try to find tickets for Sharon and Jason and the rest of us went back to the SDA to see if paperwork was ready. We stood there in a very crowded hallway for quite a while. I held a sleeping Elijah. I think my back is going to have a hard time with this trip. We were pretty surprised when our facilitator said our paperwork was ready in addition to Sharon and Jason’s. Our facilitator made copies then we went out to eat at the same place. Keith and I had some sort of meat ball with something in it, a salad and a pastry of some sort. Elijah had a muffin. Delicious as always and we spent about 60 grivna- about $8. After we got back we learned that the translator had gotten us train tickets to go out in the morning at 6:30. The same driver would again give us a ride to the train station.