First: I would like to apologize to those who have been keeping up with our story, for falling off the blog-wagon! Once we arrived in Kharkov, the days were SO busy, and I was truly exhausted at the end of each day. That and unpredictable internet access had me embarrassingly far behind in updates. Once we returned from Ukraine, I was surprised at how long it took us to re-engage in our typical schedule. Here we are, two months later, and I'm only now getting back into the swing of things; blogging included.
Second: the answer to the above question is NO (thank goodness)! The recovering perfectionist in me is going to attempt a brief recap of our time in Rachel's region, and save the cool pictures I took along the way for another post - my intent here is to get you all up to speed on our progress:
After our overnight train ride from Kiev to Kharkov, we went straight to the CPS office in Zmiiv (Rachel's village), about a 45 minute drive; to show that we had permission from SDA (the head of Ukraine's CPS offices) to visit both Rachel, and her older sister - I'll call her "I", for privacy reasons. We went straight to "I's" boarding school to meet with her and the director of her school. It was awkward, to say the least! "Hello, you've never met us, but we'd like you to consider being our daughter..."(more on that later). Then we went to Rachel's orphanage, where we met with the director of her orphanage. Rachel came in about 20 minutes into our meeting, face beaming, where she fell victim to a one minute Rachel sandwich between Brett and I - oh my gracious, it was so wonderful to see her!! 14 months is too long to wait to see someone you love! We visited for quite a while, then left to pick up "I" at the boarding school, and returned to Rachel's orphanage again so the girls could visit while we all ate lunch. After all of this, we still had to find a place to stay for the next week, so we visited a few 'resorts'. Yes, the quotations are purposeful. I'm sure they were nice back in the day, but you could tell that when the Soviet Union left, the money to keep things up and running went with it!
The next morning, we went straight to "I's" school, where she immediately told us that she had decided she wanted to be adopted! Wow, did we feel humbled and grateful that the Lord would deem us worthy to take these girls in as our own! But that meant we had work to do! We drove 45 minutes back to Kharkov with "I", so we could all sign and notarize paperwork saying that "I" wanted to be adopted. Then back to Zmiiv to drop "I" back at her school, followed by another too-short visit with Rachel.
The next day, our driver had already picked up "I", but when we got in the car, I could tell that the mood had changed. Our translator conversed with the driver for a while, then informed us that "I" had changed her mind. It seems many fears had come up in her mind since we had seen her last, and she didn't want to come with us any more. This was difficult news to hear, of course, but I can't say I was too surprised - that's a lot to ask of a 17 and a half year old, who has never been to America, has been out of her orphanage for the last year, and without parental authority for the last 10 years. So, what to do now? We decided to take it a day at a time, give her a day to think it over, and revisit the subject with her the next day. Over the next few days, she did waffle back and forth, but in the end, informed us that she was comfortable with her new independence, and that she didn't want to be under our authority
Our facilitator informed us that there was no splitting of siblings in this region, under any circumstance, and that our only option was to return to the U.S., and wait for "I" to turn 18. Thankfully, this is happening on July 10th, where she will no longer have orphan status, and will not be legally tied to Rachel. Understandably, Rachel was pretty hot under the collar at "I" for making her wait longer for a family! Oh, the tears she cried when we left. The last thing we saw as we left our girl behind, was her crying red face, peeking out of the orphanage window from under the lace window coverings. I don't think I'll ever forget that image.
So, here we are, waiting, and waiting (again!). We have come to find that adoption is made up of two main ingredients. Tortuous waiting, followed by furious action (or vice versa). Waiting for July, when we can return to see our Rachel, and bring her home for good.
No comments:
Post a Comment