Good Byes

Today we say good bye to Kyvi Rig, the orphanage and children. It is still early morning here (we are 7 hours ahead of you in PA). We await Syvette's call to give us the details and times for our day. She has been in Kiev since a few days ago. It is amazing how you learn to manage on your own when you cannot even speak the language. The visits to the orphanage are so much more beneficial going alone. The children learn to communicate with you and you with them. When someone is there to translate there is not the same interaction or closeness it is easier for them to just speak to the translator and her translate what she chooses to tell you. We get to know the children much better when we go alone, God provides ways to bridge the language barrior and we get to know the children better when we go alone. They are all so eager to communicate with us and we find ways. Heather and Ana have all kind of non verbal communication that allows them to express how they feel about things to each other. It has been a wonderful, humbling experience being here. I have learned so very much and realize more each day how much we daily take for granted as Americans.We cannot begin to realize how very blessed we are to have been born in America. We have so very much while others have so little. Some people say it is expensive to adopt, yet in America we will spend as much on a new vehicle as it takes to save a child, a soul.There are grants available in America to help with costs for adoption. When I get home I need to find out more about them, any of you who enjoy digging into finding answers please help me find out all there is to know about this subject.
Syvette said we must go to the bank with the orphanage director today to sign papers, it seems there was a small amount of money left by the government for Ana when her mother died this money will now belong to the orphanage so we have to sign papers to release it. Ana will not be attending school today with the other children and I just learned last night after returning from the orphanage that we will not be permitted to see the children again. I wish Syvette would have told us earlier, we told the children we would see them tomorrow (meaning today) when we left last night. If we are required to take Ana while the children are at school we will not be able to say good-bye and will never see the children again. I pray all works out to host the children at the hosting camp in America. The 20 children that we were given opportunity to perhaps host at Quest Haven we have had time to spend with all of them except 3 so we have good information, truths about many of the children. Syvette had told us we would be able to see the two sisters on Monday to give them gifts we brought, now I am not so sure we will get an opportunity. We had purchased cross necklaces in America and brought them along for Ana to give each of the girls in the group. We gave them to them at the celebration for Ana on Friday evening. I told the girls to wear them and each time they looked at them to rememeber that I am praying for them to find a family to belong to that will love them as much as we love Ana, but MOST OF ALL the cross necklace was to be a reminder that each of them have a heavenly Father, God, who loves them, watches over them and cares for them 24/7 and that He will never leave them or forsake them. Before we came here Isaac struggled to watch the utubes of the Ukrainian children living in the streets, he ask me why God allows these children to live as they have to, why He does not help them. I explained that He calls us as Christians to be His hands and feet, his lips, his arms of love and that it is our responsibility to reach out to those less fortunate than ourselves and help them. All around us everyday there are people hurting, my prayer is that God will allow me to see with His eyes so that I am not blind to the needs of others around me and that I would respond with His love and compassion to those needs. That I would not be to busy or caught up in daily life to reach out. I pray I will look in the mirror and see in myself what God sees and that when I look into the eyes of those I meet I would see what He sees in them. I love you guys, today go love someone in the name of Jesus.