Journey to Moscow

We are going to Moscow Monday morning and arriving in Dulles at 12:55 pm 3 days sooner than planned and 1 month sooner than our facilitator thought we would get out.  God performed another miracle and we found cheap enough flights but we have to go through Moscow.  We met all these other families adopting children-we had only one child but these other families were adopting 3 each.
One of the families didn't get their passports Friday and they might miss the May holiday deadline of May 1 and be stuck here until May 17th.  I am so grateful God opened doors and we did it all in one day yesterday.  That was a miracle because usually you do the embassy appointment one day and the visa the next but because we were there at 8 am they were able to process our visa by the afternoon. Everything shuts down here starting May 1 and many start their holiday this weekend.  Our translator is leaving the country today.  So I was so thankful to have him through all this process-the person who is left here to help us get to the airport really doesn't speak English.  So please pray he gets us to the airport by 4:30 am.  It has been a journey of adventures & miracles and God has protected us and provided for us every step of the way!

Journey of Miracles

God performed another miracle today!!  Alina passed the TB test and we were able to visit the embassy this morning at 8 a.m. and the visa appointment at 2 pm and Alina is officially ours!! Praise God-so much faster than we thought!!!!!! The passport came this morning by train and we had it at 8:45 am for the embassy appointment.  We then went to the clinic and didn't have to wait hours and then went back to the embassy and waited for a new printer to be installed and finally got the visa after 1 1/2 hours.  We met a family that was adopting 3 children and we spent the day at the clinic and the embassy with them.  We enjoyed them and had fun with them.  We are trying to come early-Tim is trying to fly us through Moscow Russia of all places.  We will see if he can get the tickets and we will be home Monday at 12:30 pm instead of Thursday.  We will see.  I wanted to go through Vienna or London but that didn't work.  So I have become a world traveler.   More when we know what miracle God performs next.  I am so glad we didn't have to wait until tuesday to get the visa!!!

Journey to an Open Door

After our appointment at the clinic yesterday we journeyed to our apartment that we are staying in this week.  Everything about our trip to Ukraine has been an adventure.  Since it is Easter here  and May holidays until May 13th the apartments were more expensive and hard to find.  So after climbing 3 flights of stairs (no there are no elevators in the apartments here)  we arrived  to a one bedroom apartment that is actually very nice; a new kitchen, and a hideaway bed in the living room.  The good part about our apartment is that there is a fruit stand on the street in front of the apartment and water stand; and restuarants all around us.  A McDonalds down the block.  So it is great to have my own food and not be getting on a plane today.  Our challenge has been to understand the doors in the buildings here.  This morning my mom and Alina could not open the door to the apartment after they came back with some food.  The key got stuck and I was locked in and they were locked out.  We kept trying and trying to open the door. Finally Alina figured it out and pushed the door really tight and the key turned.  What a relief to know they were not locked out-there is no apartment manager to help. You are on your own.  It is so symbolic of Alina's life.  Locked in the orphanage with no way out unless God performed a miracle.  With a parent in prison you can never be adopted in Ukraine and Alina had to wait until a judge would agree to terminate her father's rights.  Alina's life is a miracle and all the workers at the orphanage came to say goodbye and couldn't believe after 4 1/2 years Alina was able to walk out the door of the orphanage and never return.  I will never forget her friends waving from the windows of the orphanage as we drove away.  They are locked away and there is no one to come for them.  Alina is so happy to be out.  Of course what she loves to do is sit and play her pink ipod.  

Journey to the TB test

My mom flew into Donetsk Ukraine on Tuesday April 23 and we flew to Kiev at 7:10 am today.  We made it to the Clinic to get a physical and the TB test.  We arrived at 9:30 am and left at 1 pm.  It was  a long and very very tiring day as we waited for the Dr. to show to do the TB test. A miracle that we made it and can read the test on Friday and we are praying and would covet your prayers that the test is negative and if we have to get an x-ray it is negative so we can fly back home next week after the Embassy visit & visa appointment.

Journey to a family

I wonder what a 12 year old thinks about the last night she spends in an orphanage?  After spending the last 7 years of her life in a room with 15 other girls what must it feel like to know you are leaving for good and you will have a room of your own and a mom and dad and 4 brothers to love you?  Our facilitator told me that Alina was the most excited child she had ever seen yesterday as she waited for us to come.  She wouldn't go to school and she just keep asking when we were coming.  Today she wants to go to school (ends at noon) and say goodbye to everybody and I will get her at 1:00.  It will be sad for her to say goodbye to her friends and caregivers but I know she has dreamed and prayed for this day for 7 years-a family of her own.  God has such a heart for these unwanted children.  A Heart of Adoption-He gives us the right to be called children of God through adoption.
Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God-children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husbands will, but born of God.  John 1:12-13

Journey to Istanbul

My Journey to adoption has now taken me through Istanbul Turkey!  This week I was to travel back to Ukraine to finalize the adoption of Alina Hope on Sunday April 21.  On Saturday we found out that all Lufthansa workers in Germany were going on strike on Monday April 22.  I was to fly through Frankfurt Germany and on to Kiev, Ukraine but due to the strike my flight would not have left and I would have been stuck in Frankfurt again.  Needless to say I did not want to be stuck in Frankfurt again.  Twice in a life time is enough for me.  God was so faithful again to provide one more miracle upon miracles in this adoption journey and my husband saw the email just as it was posted and we quickly called to change my ticket and skip Germany all together. So Saturday night at 11:30 pm I flew to Istanbul and then on to Kiev.  I will fly out tonight at 7:30 pm to Donetsk Ukraine to get Alina on Tuesday April 23.  God has orchestrated this whole adoption  process because on April 23 it is our 25th wedding anniversary.  So God had it planned that I would walk my daughter out of an orphanage on my 25th wedding anniversary.  I know most people wouldn't ask for a girl on their 25th wedding anniversary but my husband has known that this has been my dream my whole life.  What a priceless gift!!!! What a gift my husband is to me.  My husband is not with me on this trip but he is in my heart as I walk our daughter out to freedom.  My mom will join me here on Tuesday so we are praying for another miracle as she flies through Munich Tuesday-they say the strike in Germany will be over then.
God has such a heart for adoption.  We have witnessed miracle after miracle as God has broken through so many doors that were seemingly shut for this little girl to be adopted.  This week alone we witnessed God move mountains to get Alina to be able to get her TB testing in Kiev on April 24 at 12pm.  When I called just last Tuesday to the clinic in Kiev they said we just changed the law today (I know God moved in the hearts of these men to change a new law)  that children can get tested for their TB test without their passports (Alina will not have her passport until April 26th.)  May 1-10 is Holidays here and if we miss this test we will be stuck here until May 17th. Praying for a miracle!

Journey to Munich

Yesterday we only got to see Alina at the orphanage right before we flew out to Munich. Alina had a fever and they wouldn't let her leave the orphanage. The schools in the area have been closed because    on an epidemic of flu and sickness.  Lots of the kids in the orphanage were sick also.  So it was a sad day because Alina couldn't come and be with us.  We got to spend a little time with her taking pictures  and telling her we would be back soon.  It is hard to leave her there in Makeevka-snow drops is the name of the orphanage.  It is such a depressed area with wild dogs roaming the streets that actually attack people at times.  Driving away was very difficult - Alina is fine when we leave her  because she can't wait to tell her friends there what she has been given and that someone loves her.  We are the first people to ever visit her in 7 years.  So the presents and clothes she receives represents love to her that she has not had in her life.  So this process is special to her-she gets to show everyone there she is loved and wanted.  Don't we all want to know that we are loved?  That someone cares about us?  That we matter in life?  What a gift we have been given in Jesus Christ.  We are loved.  Someone cared enough about us to die for us.  We matter in this life.
And HOPE does not  disappoint us,  because God has poured out his LOVE into our hearts by the  Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.  You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for the righteous man, though for a good a someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demontrates  his own LOVE for us us in this:
While we were still sinners,  CHRIST DIED FOR US. Romans 5:5-8
We spent the night in Munich and will sight see today and fly home tonight.  More from Ukraine when I make it back for the final trip to finally bring Alina Hope Home for Good!

Journey to a Daughter

It's a Girl!!!!!!!  March 8, 2013 we finally have a daughter!  Alina Hope is ours as of today.  We have to wait 10 days before she is with us for good and who knows how long before we can get her out of Ukraine but at the court today they officially said she is adopted.  It was quite a process.  We had to wait for a document that was completed as of last Friday at 7 p.m. from Kiev.  They had to fax the document.  That sounds easy to us but not here!  They have no fax machine or internet at the SDA department in Kiev so she had to find one-she went to the post office-they were closed and so she had to go to a hotel and fax it.  We waited at the court for over an hour before we could proceed.  They asked us why we wanted to adopt.  My husband said God had melted his heart when he met Alina and God had called us to adopt.  They asked Alina if she wanted to be adopted and she said yes.  After an hour in court they had no objections to our adopting Alina.  We then went to a grocery store and bought juice and little cakes to celebrate at the orphanage with her group of children that she is a part of-about 10 kids ages 11-13.  It is rainy and cold here today so we are back in the hotel room with Alina.  We will still have to take her back to the orphanage tonight at 7 p.m.  We have waited 4 years and 3 months for Alina to finally be ours.  What a journey God has taken us on.  She has been my daughter in my heart since I met her.  So it is so good to make it official.  To bring her home will take us another journey back to Ukraine to get Alina's passport and go for a medical exam in Kiev that now includes a TB test which is new as of April 1 and will cause us to have to wait for the results.  We get to see Alina again tomorrow and then we fly home and will be back. 

Now faith is being sure of what we HOPE for and certain of what we do not see.  Hebrews 11:1

Journey of Hope

We are back in Donetsk Ukraine for our 2nd trip out of 3 in our adoption process.  This trip was so much better!!!!! No snow delays and being stuck in Frankfurt. We flew through Munich, Germany.  Munich is such a nice airport.  After not sleeping much on the full plane we arrived at 7:00 am to find that Munich airport has a bed area with couches and chairs that lay back so you can sleep.  What a great idea. So nice to lay down for 3 hours and then catch our flight to Donetsk and arrive here today at 3:30 pm.  We will go to the orphanage and see Alina tomorrow. Then Monday am we will go to court  to officially adopt Alina.  She will come with us and be asked if she wants to be adopted and be a part of our family.  We will also be asked questions about why we want to adopt.  It will be an exciting day to finally have the court decree.  We have to wait 10 days before she can be with us so we will go back home to the United States and come back again.  More from Ukraine after I get some much needed rest.