Appointment

Sasha has our signed approval from the SDA and we have a court hearing scheduled for 10:00am on Friday. The orphanage director is supposed to be returning from Greece today, so Andrei is going to call him tomorrow to see if we can get permission to pick Vacya up from the camp tomorrow afternoon and have him stay with us overnight. Then if all goes well at the court hearing, hopefully we won't have to take Vacya back out to the camp.

Maybe Friday

When I talked to Andrei this morning, our approval was done and just needed to be signed by the SDA director.  I haven't heard if Sasha was able to pick it up or not.  We should have our court hearing on Friday, but don't have a time assigned yet.  Andrei has to call the judge on Thursday to get an appointment time.  Hopefully it will really  happen.  It's hard not to be skeptical at this point.

New SDA Approval

We're still waiting on the new approval from SDA, which Sasha said we may get tomorrow, but we don't really know. We can't get another court date until we get the new approval, so we're still just waiting...

Happy 4th of July

We went out to the camp to visit Vacya today.  There was a really nice lady who works there that was telling us how much she loves Vacya.  She said he's very kind and likes to help with things around the camp.  It was so nice to have a caregiver be positive and tell us good things about him after all of the negative things we've heard at the orphanage.  Vacya seemed to be in good spirits. We told him that the court hearing had to be changed again and will hopefully happen next week. 

After spending some time at the camp, we drove the rest of the way to Sudak to spend a few hours at the beach.  Tonight we're going to another missionary couple's home to celebrate the 4th.  I think we're even going to have fireworks :)

Happy Birthday to Alec, Micah, and Malachi.  We're bummed that we couldn't be there for your parties.

Shelby, yesterday Uriye told Tammy that they found Sasha (girl) at a village near the orphanage and she will be coming back in time for school to start!

Beki, if you see Diane at work, can you ask her how Rajah is doing?  I always worry about his breathing in the summer when it gets hot and humid.  Thanks.

For other families adopting in Ukraine

Our facilitator just told us about a great deal for traveling within Ukraine. A Hungarian airline is starting to have flights in Ukraine and will be having great promotional rates this summer. Starting July 11, it is less than $20 to fly between Kiev and either Simferopol, Lviv, or Odessa. I think those are the only cities that they are flying to at this time. Check out wizzair.com if this will help with your traveling plans. The rates will gradually increase, but right now it's cheaper than a train.

Another delay

We will not be having our court hearing tomorrow after all. Andrei arrived in Simferopol this morning and found out that we need to have a new approval from the SDA that is just for me, not both of us. I had to sign a new application to the SDA today and have it notarized. Andrei is sending it by train up to Kiev tonight and Sasha should get it tomorrow morning. Then he will take it to the SDA to get the new approval and send that back down here. If all goes well and Sasha is able to get the new approval right away, we should be able to have another court hearing either Friday or Monday. It is frustrating because I asked about that before we left last time we were here and was told that everything was fine. At least we found out now though, and not at the actual hearing. From what the judge has told Andrei, there should be no reason for the prosecutor not to agree with my application to adopt. The judge went to the appeal court to ask about it and was told that if the prosecutor does object again, they can over-ride it because the paperwork is all in order (once we have the new approval from the SDA) and there is no legal reason that we cannot adopt Vacya. So even though we have yet another delay, we can go into the next hearing with a little more confidence in the outcome.

Tammy was out at the camp today and said that Vacya has been beaten-up again. He had some scratches across one of his cheeks. Please pray for his continued safety and for this whole process to be finalized soon so that we can all come home.

Early morning

It looks like we're going to have a really early morning tomorrow. So far we haven't been able to get permission to have Vacya overnight tonight. The orphanage director has to give permission, but he's on vacation in Greece right now. The lawyer from the orphanage who has been coming to our court hearings is trying to find out if there is someone else that can give us permission since the director is not available. However, there isn't anyone at the orphanage right now because the kids are at camp. We'll probably have to leave Simferopol at 6am tomorrow morning to have enough time to get Vacya and get back in time for our 9:00 hearing. If anyone's awake at 2am (eastern time) tomorrow morning, we'd really appreciate your prayers. We have no idea at this point what's going to happen at this next hearing, but are still trying to be hopeful.