Tuesday

I want to thank everyone who is praying for us as well as the emails, facebook comments, and comments to the posts, etc. They all bring me lots of encouragement and are cherished!

The days are going by rather quickly now that I am a “stay at home away from home dad”. We had a good day despite finding out at 10:30 that our.

At around 9am I got my shower then got the kids ready to go to the park and an early lunch so we could be back by noon to meet Kostya and Anna. Before we headed out the door, I called Kostya to ask when they would be arriving and he told me that they had spoken to the director of passports here in Khelm and he said they were in Kiev and would be in Khelm on Wednesday morning. “Unbelievable” I thought. I really would do as well to not even ask! I told the kids that we weren’t going to get the passports today and Maks said “maybe tomorrow, pop?” There are doing great with all this waiting and uncertainty.
We headed to the park and on the way, Maks asked if they could drive the small battery powered cars they rode the first day they visited with me. Sure I said and they took off running. After the cars, we walked to the park where they went straight for the swings! From the swings, they went for the merry go round and just as they got on, a 2-3 year old with her mother walked up and wanted on. I got Maks’ attention and motioned to go slow because of the little one. He understood and did a good job to keep it slow. When the little girl got off, I told him he could “go fast!” And they did. So fast in fact that after about 5 minutes, Maks was stopping it and got off telling me he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go to doma (house). I asked the girls to come over and explained that we needed to go. Since Maks didn’t feel well, we weren’t going to be able to out to lunch and we didn’t have much to eat so I asked Maks if he could make it through a quick stop at the grocery and he agreed. We hurried through picking up 2 couple of tomatoes, a few apples, a bunch of bananas (the really small ones – I don’t think I had ever had them before, but they are pretty good), a few pears, some juice, Coke Light, dried fish (this time) some Ramon noodle soup packages, chips, bread, gum, peanuts in the shell and sunflower seeds. By the time we were done, Maks was done.

When we got back, Maks lay down and I fixed lunch for the girls. They had a whole hodge podge of stuff we had just bought. After lunch, I went downstairs and the girls went in their room to watch TV with Maks. When I came back up, Maks and Natasha were asleep. I wanted to do my Experiencing God Bible study so I invited Alona to go outside with me and suggested she could work on one of the “workbooks” we had brought with us. They have math, spelling, and readings activities in them. We had a good hour or so together and even got to Skype with Jenny for a few minutes then Natasha game out.

This is going to sound crazy, but its 12:30am again and at the pace I’m typing this it will be 2:00am before I’m finished so I’m going to quickly wrap it up.
Maks got up around 3pm and felt a little better. We had dinner at 5pm. At 6:30 they started getting their baths which are getting longer and longer each time! At 7pm, Tatiana’s husband (I think it’s Antonio) came up and asked us to come downstairs. We went and he had prepared a very nice dinner of roasted chicken, potatoes au gratin, fresh tomatoes, and cucumber. It was all on a tray ready for us to carry up. It was a very nice gesture and a very good meal. Maybe the best meal I’ve had while I’ve been here! The kids didn’t eat much of it so I enjoyed their leftovers. We watched more TV and at 9:45pm we sang songs, said a prayer, and light out. I skyped with Jenny and the kids for a while and then tried to get things packed back up in case we are going to Kiev tomorrow.

Anna and Kostya are here and they are supposed to call at 9am to check on the passports. Please pray that God’s will be done regarding them.

Sorry no pictures for the 2nd day in a row. We’ve taken some, but by the time I’ve started posting, it’s late and the connection is very slow and it takes forever to upload them.

Blessings <><,
David