Changing plans, as usual

I went to the passport office at 8:00am only to find out that it didn’t open until 9:00am. After coming back to the hotel for a few minutes, I returned about 9:00 and they finally opened the doors at about 9:10am. A few minutes later Ileana and the boys arrived. Unfortunately, we couldn’t begin the process of getting their corrected passports until the Director of the passport office arrived about an hour later. The boys had to have their pictures retaken and we had to pay the fee again even though it was their fault the original passports had been done incorrectly. About 10:30, Ileana came over to me after talking to the Director and told me that we would have to pick up the new passports on Thursday! This would not work at all for our process schedule so we called Valery on his cell phone and Ileana carried the phone into the office for him to speak to the Directory. When she came back out, the news was a little better; we could pick them up after 3:00pm.

In order to not waste the whole day and at least accomplish something that we needed to do, we decided to go to Molochansk and pick up Zhenya so that he could be with us for at least the next couple of days. Don was going to take us but realized that he wouldn’t have enough time so we called one of our taxi drivers, Sasha to take us. We also took Misha (a college student who had helped Don teach Viktor and Sasha English) along with us to serve as our translator. After stopping in Takmak to buy a couple of torts and some drinks to share with some of Zhenya’s friends, we finally bounced our way to the Molochansk orphanage. We went into the Director’s office and the lawyer, Olga, also joined us. They told us that we would need to follow a more strict set of steps before signing the paper that officially released Zhenya into our care. The most disturbing point was that they insisted that Valery would have to be present in order to “put his mark” on the document since he was the facilitator/licensed translator that had been involved with our process up to this point. They also told us which days certain offices were closed that had to be part of this process and we attempted to determine which day we could complete all the required steps. We also told the Director that we would like to make a donation to the orphanage and for him to be thinking of the greatest needs that they had. He also had Zhenya’s transcript ready and gave it to us. Meanwhile, back in Berdyansk, Viktor and Sasha picked up their new passports and took copies of them to the tax office and obtained their new tax id forms.

When we asked what we should do about a small party with the torts and drinks, we were told to let Zhenya take them to the dorm and just share with his friends. We asked how we could find Zhenya which ended up not to be very difficult since he was waiting outside the office door when we opened it. After giving him hugs and showing him the food, he took off for the dorm. We followed him there after a little delay talking to one of his caregivers who wanted to check us out to make sure that we would love him as much as she did. When we got to Zhenya’s floor, he informed us that they had all just eaten and he would rather we all just go ahead and leave for Berdyansk and let his friends have a party without him later. We thought this was a little strange but were able to get him to pose for some pictures with his friends before heading out. We had planned to take the boys to see National Treasure, Book of Secrets when we got back to Berdyansk and ate some supper but when we found our that it didn’t start until 9:30pm, we decided to just eat and then go to the orphanage for a while to spend some time with all three boys together.

When we arrived, we found the Viktor and Sasha in the cafeteria. Sveta, the Assistant Director was also there and offered us some tea. While we were drinking our tea, Tamara complimented Sveta on her beautiful hair clip. Much to our surprise, she grabbed it from her hair and forced Tamara to take it from her even though we both pleaded for her to keep it. She is such a kind and sweet person and she cares about the children very much. Since the ping pong room had been locked, we decided to go upstairs to the room where we had the party and talk for a while with Misha’s help. We explained as much as possible to the boys about the remaining steps that were left before we could go home to Alabama and answered any questions that they had. After Don arrived to pick us up, Tamara and I decided to go with him, Inna, and Misha to Don’s apartment to see what it and the other apartment looked like. We ended up staying and talking about potential new ministry opportunities to adoptive families and mission groups until about 10:00pm before they took us back to the hotel.