Another day

Today was more of the same routine. Get up, do school work with Brianne, be picked up by Nicolae and Oksana go to the orphanage for a few hours, hit a restaurant for lunch, walk home, finish school work, read, do Bible time, movie, snack, get ready for bed. It is becoming a little monotonous for all of us. We are all typically very active and things are much slower here. Our highlight is definitely seeing the kids, but we wish we had brought more games. We still had a full table of 8 or so playing cards today. Natasha had drawn Brianne's name on a paper and decorated it and asked her to play "Old Maid" right away. The wonderful thing about this group is that they are still Young at Heart and their innocence shines through.

At first I was concerned b/c they told us that Lena was in 5th grade here. With her age, she should be in 7th, but we remember her telling us that when she was with her mother she only went to school about 2 or 3 months out of the year. Now, I am glad about this b/c she is the oldest in her class. One more year of age or higher academic skills and she would be w/the older group. You can definitely see a difference in the maturity of the kids and the girls are interested in boys, etc. It seems that we are getting her at an opportune and impressionable time. We are thankful for that. Actually, academically I was impressed with her reading. I was planning on starting at the beginning and she is reading quite well in English to my surprise! I will have to go back w/some phonics still b/c many of the words she knows are sight words that she has memorized but still it will help her alot.

The restaurant we ate at today was not good and too expensive. Trent got stewed meat, not really sure what kind of meat! I got a baked potato and when I got halfway through it I took a bite that was definitely NOT potato. Trent thought it might be slabs of lard that were cooked. Whatever it was, I couldn't help spitting it out. So much for etiquette.

Speaking of such, it is rude and bad luck here to whistle inside. Besides whistling being rude, they have a superstition that if you do it inside you will lose all your money. Hey, with the US economy now, maybe we've all just been whistling too much, ha! Of course, it's also very rude to yawn in front of others. I managed to do both in succession yesterday at the orphanage, but managed to quickly recover and stop myself. Trent whistled once too and we called him on it. O. said that if he did it in Nicolae's car that N. would lose his money. Trent said that he would probably throw on the brakes and kick him out to walk the rest of the way. O. retold this statement to Nicolae and he got the biggest laugh out of it. I've never seen him laugh so hard. By the way, they told us today that Nicolae grew up in an orphanage too from 6 til 16 but that the conditions were much better for orphans then and that the government gave them an apartment and money and helped them get jobs or go to higher education then. Not so lucky today. Maybe this is what made him so sensitive and caring. I gave him a New Testament yesterday when we got in the car and he sat there reading for about 5 min. while we all waited to leave, but of course no one said anything! Pray that he will read it more and more and ask us questions through Oksana. They could both learn of Jesus' love together:)

Today, my heart sank as we talked to O. about the timeline of things. Trent and Brianne are planning on going home on the 12th and I was planning on staying until the 10 days of waiting was over. However, I sat down w/O. on the calendar b/c they tend to only tell us things as they think we need to know them. I wanted definites which seems to be impossible here. They stated that the 10 days is 10 full days, not the court day or the 10th day. Then the 11th day is on Sat. and vital records aren't open on Monday, hmmmm. So Tues, the 24th we would have to go to Lena's hometown to get a new birth certificate and back to Donetsk on 24th or 25th for notary and passport, then HOPEFULLY on to Kiev on 26th to Embassy and medical eval. and probably not home until the 28th. Somehow, I'd hoped the 20 days our facilitator told us would come to pass even though I haven't read about any other couples who were so lucky. So now I am dealing w/the dilemma of going home and returning or staying and waiting. Of course, I miss Blake and would love to go home to see him for over a week. That would be wonderful. However, the plane trip (23hours) is awful and you miss 1 full night of sleep. That would be the same going and coming and going back home again. Plus, I wouldn't get to see the kids at the orphanage. Trent and I realized last night that it would be the first Valentines Day in 22 years that we would be apart. Ahhh, isn't that sweet. I was thinking today about how much I would have to miss Brianne and Trent too now, but in truth the time has passed quickly so far and I'm not sure how. I have e-mailed our facilitator, travel agent and we will talk to Lena about it tomorrow. Please pray for clear discernment on this and that I will have peace about my decision. I am definitely torn.