Thursday, December 3

We're at an internet cafe. Here are the entries from my journal.

Thursday, December 3

Today was spent waiting for our referral to Sumy. K told us to be at the SDA at 4:15 p.m. Michael and I, unfortunately, are on different sleeping schedules. Try as I might, I crash about six or seven p.m. and awaken at two a.m. Michael gets to sleep about midnight and awakens at seven a.m. So two a.m. to seven a.m. is a very lonely time for me. This morning I blogged Wednesday's happenings and answered e-mails. Thank goodness for friends and family back home who are keeping us sane. I now have Phoenix friends following my blog who hosted in Sasha's group and of course my SLC friends, many of whom have already traveled the road we're on now.

Every morning Michael and I read scriptures and then exercise to a recorded workout that we play on a tiny cassette player. Then we get ready for the day and set out on foot to see what we can see in Kiev.

Our current apartment is GREAT but has no stove, so we can't really cook. It has been recently remodeled and is very modern and clean with a flat screen TV. For $50 a night, we are happy. We soon discovered, however, to just leave the TV off! In search for an English channel, we ran into hardcore porn. Whoa!

This morning we ate breakfast at a nice little cafe about two blocks from the apartment. We ordered pizza! It wasn't very good, though. The sauce tasted a little like mayonnaise, but we were starving and managed to eat the whole thing.

After breakfast, we took a taxi to see the Kiev LDS Temple. Our driver had a hard time finding it. At one point he stopped at a small church with a picture of Jesus on the front door. We said, "No, big church." He said, "Christian church," pointing to the building. I suppose he thought we would be happy with any Christian church? As we found our way back to the "beltway" again, we started to see a very large building in the distance; soon we could make out the figure of
Angel Moroni atop the spire. Michael and I both wanted to leap from our seats. We pointed for the driver and said, "There, there." He said, "Oh, big, big church." He went in that direction, and soon we pulled into the nearby parking lot. We could not walk onto the grounds; it's still a construction zone. Scaffolding was all around the building and no landscaping was in, but rows and rows of trees, bushes, etc. were lined up waiting to be planted. As we walked into the beautiful chapel through the parking lot, there was the familiar picture of Christ at the Second Coming. For a few moments I felt like I was home again. It all looked exactly like an LDS chapel in the Salt Lake Valley. We were greeted by Sister Larsen, a cute sister missionary from SLC, who has been in Ukraine for four months. Her companion was from Armenia. I would imagine this is a hard mission in this cold, dark, post USSR country. These people need the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ so badly.

K called us early afternoon to report we would be leaving Kiev about eight p.m. to head for Sumy! This was a surprise. They had found a 15-passenger van/bus leaving from the train station. This would give us all of Friday in Sumy to move the process along.

Typical checkout time from an apartment is one p.m. As we needed an apt. until 7:15 p.m., we had to pay for an extra night. We really couldn't wander Kiev or sit on the curb for six hours with four pieces of luggage, two being very large.

We walked to the SDA at four p.m., where a sizable group of other adoptive couples were waiting. We chatted with a couple from Ohio. It is always so nice to talk to other Americans and console one another on the difficulty of the process. They are adopting a 2-year-old boy from Dniproprotrosk. He has a cleft palate, and they have only seen pictures of him. They said they'd been there ten days and were headed out on the train to meet him.

After our SDA referral, which took about two minutes, we ate borscht at the same cafe and headed back to pack up. A taxi delivered us to the train station, where we met up with Inna. A man yelled at me and said I scratched his van when I opened my car door. There was no visible scratch or dent of any kind. He rubbed it for a full minute with his handkerchief and made a big scene over nothing.

It was a four or five-hour drive to Sumy in the dark. We couldn't see any of the countryside. We arrived about one a.m. A taxi delivered the three of us to a dark, very run-down apartment building. A word here about the sidewalks and pavement: they are full of holes, broken cement, and unlevel and unsafe walking conditions, and it's dark with no lights. At night it is very dangerous to walk outside. As we pulled our luggage to the door of the apt. building, I stepped in a dipped portion of the sidewalk, sprained my ankle, and hit the ground. To make a long story short, as we lay in bed that night, Michael and I started questioning our sanity. Our linen was dirty; the blanket smelled like urine. We covered the pillows with our own towels. Worst of all, we discovered there was no running water in the bathroom. Inna's room did not have a light bulb in it.

In the middle of the night, when things always look the bleakest, I woke Michael up to ask for a priesthood blessing. My ankle was hurting so bad I started wondering if I had broken or cracked a bone. I was able to sleep after that. Thank heavens for the priesthood and Heavenly Father's tender mercies. So I'm counting my blessings.
1. My husband who is with me on this journey. I can't imagine doing this alone.
2. My four children at home, whom I can't wait to see again.
3. Our parents and extended family, which our two children in Ukraine have not had the blessing of.
4. The gospel.
5. My beautiful home in Taylorsville.
6. The wonderful state of Utah.
7. The great country of USA.