Almost a third of the way there!

Take a look at our fundraising thermometer. It's moving up!  We have been very blessed this month in our business and have been able to save $5,000 for the adoption.  We also have been blessed with generous donations from family and friends in December, including a Christmas Jar full of money that someone left on our doorstep on Christmas Eve.  The kindness of everyone just overwhelms us.  We are so grateful for all of you.  December does tend to be a busier month for our business, but next month we hope to set aside another $5,000 between what we can manage to save and our tax refund.  Our dossier is being submitted and we probably will be traveling in February.  We still need financial help, especially if we add two more sisters to the adoption!  If you can donate, even just a little, to helping change the lives of our three Ukrainian girls, please do!  Everyone's help makes a difference.

We called the girls yesterday morning.  Our wonderful neighbors who have been translating during our phone calls come every time we call at 9 in the morning.  This time our friend, Brenda, who opened our eyes to helping orphans, also came over with a 15 year old Ukrainian boy she is hosting for Christmas.  He would help with the translating as our neighbors have a hard time understanding everything.  We in particular wanted to ask the girls about their two younger sisters who we thought weren't alive anymore according to what we thought the girls had told us previously.

We called and were told that the girls were in class.  It is 6 pm for them, so that seemed odd.  We were told to call back 1/2 hour later.  We decided to play a game while waiting which turned out to be really fun.  Our kids joined us, our neighbors, Brenda and her host son in a lively game of spoons.  I've got to bring that game to Ukraine to play at the boarding school (the girls' orphanage).

A half hour went by and we called again.  We were able to reach the girls.  We skype to a landline in Ukraine.  I love it because we can all hear the girls over speakers and we can all talk to them.  Our translating neighbors were glad to find that Brenda's host son, a really nice kid, couldn't understand everything the girls say too.  They haven't lost as much of their Russian as they'd thought!  We were able to learn from the girls that as far as they know, their sisters are alive in in a different institution.  They haven't heard anything about them since they were separated when Lyuba was 6. 

I have talked to our facilitator about this and the Ukrainian facilitator will be looking into whether or not we will have to adopt all five at once.  Not knowing is becoming hard on me.  But I have faith that things will turn out how they are supposed to.

Snezhana and Sam - Everytime we talk to Snezhana she asks to speak to Sam.