To our friends and family, thank you so much for your support, you have no idea how much you have helped. We are now back in Kiev waiting for another appointment, our first referral did not work out. They received applications on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but they are in training today and we have been told to come tomorrow at 9 a.m. The apartment we have is very nice, it even has a washing machine. I did 2 loads last night and 2 today. It is very small.

The past week has been one of the hardest weeks of our life. I am not going to go into great detail…but here it is in a nut shell. We have been in Makeevka (a small village outside of Donetsk) since last Thursday morning. The train ride was….BAD. I would not recommend it, but it is cheap and we will do it again if necessary. We flew back last night…after the past week, I could not face the train. We have been spending time with a little girl (7) and her brother (5). The unfortunate part is that she was hosted by an American family from August 12-31. This trip was still fresh in her mind and the woman calls twice a week. She did not want us to adopt her, she is waiting for this family to come for her. The sad part is that this could take a year, or it may never happen. These people have not even been approved to adopt. Ukraine has not accepted any new applications for the past year. When they start accepting them (hopefully in January) they will be flooded with applications. These people may not come for a year, or possibly ever. What does this mean for these children? They will sit in the orphanage and suffer. The longer they sit there, the more their mental and physical state deteriorates. This woman and her husband believe they are these children's parents and they may never be (no, there have never meet him…he is to young to be hosted). I am appalled by how selfish they are, they are not thinking of the children, but themselves. My heart aches for all the other families that will come visit them, and there will be families. They are in an age group that is in demand and they are healthy. They will go through the same heart ache we did. My heart aches for the little boy who is an innocent bystander….who cried when we left him, he would have gotten on a plane with us on the second day and never looked back. So we go on. We know that there are other children out there who want us to be their parents and we are coming for them.
Makeevka was like living in the past. Our hotel was about 100 years old, our first room had a skeleton key!! We were fortunate enough to have a room with hot water, and yes, we paid extra for it. We have had limited access to the internet, we were only able to send one e-mail the entire time we were there. We were able to read my e-mails, but not Brad's and able to read the comments here. We felt so isolated that we could not contact our friends and family. We have not forgotten about you!! As I said before, it was wonderful to go into my e-mail and our blog and read what had been written. Weather it was support for what we were going through, well wishes, or gossip form the office, it was wonderful!! We are so blessed to have such an amazing family and group of friends.

Our friends Bob and Susan from home have been a life saving. They are in Ukraine as well, but we are not close, but we speak to them daily. It's so nice to have friends from home in the same time zone.

We will update tomorrow and let you know about our appointment.