WE GOT OUR MIRACLE!!

Sorry about the last post. I know...pretty negative and dire. But, that was the situation. But, in one day, and by God's grace, it has all turned around.

Basically, the last thing that we needed before we could leave Berdyansk was to have the girls' passports changed to their new names. Everyone has a general passport, kind of like our driver's license, for ID. Then there is the international passport, like the one we have. That is the one that we need to get visas and fly home. The procedure is to change the general passport (in Berdyansk), then go to the county seat (Zapareezha), and get a new international version, using the general passport as a reference.

On Thursday, we went to the Berdyansk office to do what was supposed to be a routine passport change, and the woman literally said 'she didn't feel like doing it' and would do it on Tuesday!!! We were all stunned. My facilitator didn't know what to think. So, she told me to say something in English that made it look like I was trying to get her sympathy (what I would call 'begging'), and she would just interpret for me, and try to get her to change her mind. It worked, sort of...because she then said she would MAYBE do it Saturday. Maybe?!? Basically, the way our schedule was going, and how long it took to do the Zap. passport, if she didn't do it on Saturday, we were definitely NOT going to make the Wednesday flights. She was being a real pain in the rear!

Friday, Nataliya (our facilitator) said we should take a chance. We went ahead to the Zapareezha office to sympathize with the head person of passports to see if he could help. We were just hoping he would make that evil...er, I mean...Berdyansk office lady...do her job. Instead, he said he would just go ahead and give us the international passports, which is all that we needed anyway!!

Praise God, Thank You, Lord!!!

We spent the whole day in Zapareezha processing them, along with tying up some loose ends. Then Nataliya said that we were done, and since she had to drive back to Kiev, too, she could arrange a van to pick us up and take us right away, and she would lead the way! Didn't have to ask us twice!! We called Sveta, and told her to get her sisters packin'...because we were on our way! Sveta got crazy excited. She had been waiting for that message since we got here. We picked them up after normal hours at the orphanage, thankfully the director stayed to see them off. It was very tearful for everyone. About a gillion friends and some employees were there to say goodbye to them, AND US!! It was difficult to say goodbye, to say the least. I was a little thankful that we were in a hurry, so that we did not prolong the goodbye.

Then we ran to the hotel, and spent a few hours packing, and then skee-dadled at just before midnight. We arrived in Kiev, 9 hours later, and are just now settling in (Saturday morning) at my friend, Steve Weber's, house (where we stayed when we first got here). The car ride was awful. The van was new, but you would swear that it didn't have any shocks, and the road was like an old county road that needed to be fixed up...potholes, crazy bumps and dips, everything. Not really any rest, as we had hoped during the night's ride, but, we made it in one piece. Unfortunately, Steve's family is gone now on a summer vacation back to the States, so we are here by ourselves. But, it still feels good to finally be on the direction of home.

Hopefully, we will complete everything and have our visas at the beginning of this week, and then head for home!!