We Were So Blessed Today!!!

Entrance to SDA Office

We showed up for our appointment with the SDA (Ukraine government) to receive the approval to adopt Elena.  Everything went great.  The woman from SDA brought out a large red folder with our names on it in Ukrainian.  She then pulled out Elena's file, the moment we have been waiting for.  She showed us her file and told us a little about her background.  She comes from a single mother family and has a younger brother that was adopted by a Ukrainian family.  She told us that she has minor psychological delays (very common in orphanages) and mild scoliosis.  Both of these are not major issues considering that she has been in institutional care.

Now for the real blessing.  The woman asks us (via Nastya our translator) how did we know Elena.  We told her that we had hosted her last December.  We did not think anything of the question until she said that several other families had gotten referrals for her and Elena said no to other families that wanted to adopt her.  In Ukraine while you can request a child you can't put them "on hold" until your meeting with SDA (which for us was today).  During the time we were finishing our paperwork she was available for anyone to adopt her.  Also in Ukraine, Elena has the right to say no to any adoption request.  It was such a blessing to realize that not only did we choose Elena, but Elena chose to be part our family.  The SDA worker wondered why Elena wanted to be with us when she could have already been adopted by several other familes.  She then offered another girl for us to consider adopting in addition to Elena.  This is highly unusual as they are not related.  Given her age (15) we felt that the age differences were too great for us.

We see the hand of God and answered prayer.  Every night Micah would pray "Lord please let us adopt Elena".  God was so gracious to answer our prayers and Micah's simple prayer from his heart.  Elena seemed to really bond well with Micah when she was here and Micah really liked her.  It turns out that Elena's biological brother is the same age as Micah.

On a lighter note, we are really enjoying the wonderful weather.  Today is another sunny day in the mid 70's.  Everyone seems to be out and about enjoying the weather.  We are typing this post from a cafe called "Double Coffee", which is one of the few (besides McDonald's) places in English.