Great Appointment

Dear Family and Friends,

We woke up this morning after a good sleep to find it still snowing. It really is beautiful!

Our driver picked us up at 9:30 am to take us to our scheduled appointment at the National Adoption Center here in Kiev. There was no running down the street in our dress up clothes this time, in fact we arrived 15 minutes early and had plenty of time to debrief with our facilitator, Helen, before being called up to our appointment.

At exactly 10:00am a young woman came out to meet us and took us back to our appointment and Helen was allowed to come with us—good news. At our appointment last year our facilitator was not allowed to attend our appointment with us. After some initial greetings the young government-appointed psychologist asked us to take a seat. She asked us how Nicholas was doing and then proceeded to show us Roman’s file and abbreviated history. She told us that everyone at the department was excited about our being able to adopt Roman and that she was sure Roman would have a happy life in our home. We learned that Roman’s mother’s name is Angel and his father’s name is Oleg. Roman’s parents are married and living in a small town not too far from Tulchyn. They were not prepared to handle his special needs. We are unsure at this time whether or not Roman has any other living siblings. The whole appointment lasted about 20 minutes!!!

Toward the end of the meeting the young woman told us that we would be able to receive our Letter of Direction allowing us to travel to Tulchyn and begin the adoption process between 4-5pm TODAY. This is GREAT News since usually the Department of Adoption does not issue these letters until at least the following business day, which would be Monday late afternoon.

What all this means is that we will be leaving Kiev at 5am on Monday morning which is 11:00pm Sunday night in the states. Once we arrive in Tulchyn around 9 am we will first meet with an “inspector” who will issue us another letter to go to the orphanage. Hopefully, the director of the orphanage, Maria, will begin her portion of the paper work later on Monday so that we can have our court appointment asap. We learned today that more than likely there will only have to be one court appointment for Roman’s adoption—Yea!!! We will know more once we get to Tulchyn, but are not certain what our internet capabilities will be.

We feel the power of many people’s prayers on our behalf both here and in the US. God has already been so gracious to us. Last night was especially hard for Karen as she was missing the girls and Nicholas terribly. Today, however, is better already.

Tonight we will be having dinner with Eric and Lauren Huber who are friends and missionaries working here with Mission to the World. We are hoping to meet up with other friends who are in the process of adopting right now later in the weekend.

Please pray for the following:

1) Pray that the days would go quick

2) Pray that our times of prayer and study would be rich and that we would sense the Lord’s nearness to us.

3) Pray for the girls and Nicholas who, at last check, were doing fine.

4) Pray for our ride out to Tulchyn on Monday morning as the roads are down to single lane in some parts because of the snow. The ride out is normally about 4 hours.

5) Pray for the appointment in Tulchyn with the “inspector”.

6) Pray for the orphanage director and staff to be our advocates.

We will write more when we can.

Love and Blessings,

Jim and Karen Weaver