the office might be open

so prayers that we can submit paperwork for passport would be greatly appreciated. And please pray that once submitted it's turned around quickly - Saturday passports would be wonderful. She's mine now - so can't leave country without her (and don't want to of course!), but can't leave country with her without her new passport. Feeling good, listening to some good free Crossroads downloaded music (www.crossroads.net).

Please also pray for our friends Jenny and David. This morning they'll be saying good-bye to their three home grown kids and will be getting on a plane to come over here and fetch their three Ukraine grown kids!

thanks

While you're praying here's some pics from yesterday to look at.

Here is one of the rooms for the girls. The bed in the foreground is Veronika's. ONe of her old roommates, Zhenya sent her a shirt for a gift. You can see it on Veronika's bed. The bed in the background is Zhenya's. It's empty - Zhenya doesn't sleep there anymore. Zhenya is tucked in bed all safe in sound in a bright pink (really bright) bedroom in Ohio. Yesterday Zhenya was sick, so her mom stayed home from work with her. I talked to Zhenya yesterday, she was getting lots of loving and special attention. She was all excited that her big sister is going to a dance this weekend - with Carter (our son). I'd love it if every single bed in that orphanage looked like Zhenya's bed - empty!

I brought a letter and some goodies for Luda from her new penpal. She has a 10 year old pen pal in America. Luda was so excited - read the letter, then immediately sat down and started writing a letter to her new pen pal with the stationary and one of the pens included in her package. She worked on the letter for a very long time.

Sabina has a pen pal in the US. They sent her a photo album with tons of pictures from my last trip. She was so surprised to open it and see pictures of herself. She went through it and showed me every single picture of her (I guess maybe she forgot that I was the one to take all the pics!) Then she had a bunch of extra pictures included in the back of the album so she passed those out. The kids all wanted to show me the pictures of themselves. Luda finally said "kim take photos" and kind of rolled her eyes - like why are you guys showing her these pictures like she's never seen them!

The girls. See Lida with the plastic bag on her head - she's bleaching her hair. I can't wait to see the finished product
Sabina and Veronika. Veronika made sure I got lots of pictures of her - as Zhenya (who was adopted in December) had requested more pics. If only we could get Sasha to be that enthusiastic about pictures. But my mother keeps reminding me that i was not very compliant about getting my picture taken either. Oh well.

Sasha and a volunteer at the orphanage. I've been so impressed with the number of volunteers at the school just hanging out and loving on these kids. When we adopted Anastasia we did not see one single volunteer the whole time we were there.



Zhenya and Oleg with some stuff from friends in US.