Day 3, Referral in hand

Today we goofed off and checked out of our apartment at noon. The leasing agency allows their renters to store luggage at the office, so we did and we walked uphill to our SDA referral appointment. We arrived at the appointed time, between 4 & 5pm, to find our Kiev facilitator Nadia first in line for us! Nice! Not 10 minutes later, the lady holding all the referrals for all families showed up. Heidi and I signed for our referral documents...we can officially start the process for our girl!

After looking at the paintings for sale along the street, we started hoofing it back down the hill to kill some time along Krashatik street. About a block from the Independence square McDonald's (you know the one) we got a call from Aimee and Matt Garrett. They were dining at said McDonalds! We found them and spent almost 2 hours or so catching up, making jokes and generally "cutting up". Nadia joined us later (Matt & Aimee used her for their adoption of Anya a couple of years back) and she joined in the fun. Nadia was surprised to hear the the Garretts and we live only a mile apart, but knew her! How cool!

At 6:30 pm, we had to leave our fine company and head back to the leasing agency to pick up our luggage (they closed at 7pm). We are now (7:45pm) sitting at our favorite internet cafe at the train station blogging to you and checking e-mails. At 9:30 we will make our way to our train car for the overnight trip to Kherson. We will arrive there around 10:30 am tomorrow morning. The Bible House folks and the Agape people have already arranged to have a driver meet us at the tracks and take our luggage to our Bible House room while we head off to our regional director appointment. Very nice of them to help us again...thank you guys, I know you read this!

Our Kherson facilitator will meet us at the tracks when we arrive. If all goes to plan, we all will go to the regional director's office and meet with him or her for a few minutes and get the approval to enter the orphanage as legitimate adoptive parents. He/She will accompany us and watch to see if there is a developing bond between us and our "prospective adoptive child". What do you think will be the case? :-)

So around noon or so, Lizzie will enter the room. Can't wait to snap that picture! Well that's all for now. We will chat again tomorrow. By that time we should have done all the above, we will tell you all about it. Keep those prayers coming! It seems that the director is mad at us for something somebody else has done. Don't worry though, all is well.

By the way, if my spelling is off, please forgive me. I am typing this on a Russion keyboard with faded letters and no spell checker. Pretty good I'd say myself! Bye, all for now.

~ Felix ~