They Say, "Nothing Good Ever Came Easy"

We got to Kirovograd at midnight and went to the apartment. It was the worst apartment I've ever seen: it had two very small rooms, kitchen was about 4 square yards, little shower and little bathroom. Everything was dirty- big boxes were covering the windows (there wasn't any daylight inside) - To get water we had to plug in the motor that was very noisy. We decided to look for another place the next day. So we went to the administration building where we met our Flower in person. She is a beautiful girl inside and out. She is smart, caring, nice, polite, thoughtful, loves to smile and laugh. At the orphanage she showed us every room. Then we went to the park near the orphanage. It is a nice park with flowers, walkways, places to eat and a lot of different rides. We had a good time! It was lunch time and we decided to get something to eat. The waitress looked very mad especially when we took our time to order our food. When we finally made our order, our facilitator called us and said that we need to go look at another place to stay right NOW. I thought the waitress would kill us with her eyes she was SO mad. The other place was a house, nice house but it didn't have power (the city is changing the lightpoles). We didn't have any other options. That night we spent with candles.

On Friday morning we got a call from the orphanage: Flower's father wanted to meet us right away. He is a 47 y.o. smelly man in the old worn out suit. He was drinking some herbal medicine that had alcohol in it. He said it was for his heart. He showed us some pictures and told us a lot of stories from his past. Flower was sitting between me and Bob. When he started getting drunk he started saying some curse words. I hugged Flower closer and, I guess, my face changed. Someone said, "It's OK. She heard it a lot of times". Tears came to my eyes. I wanted to cover her ears so she would never hear it again. A child shouldn't hear these words especially from her parent. Later we met some other children who live in the orphanage. They were very polite. The little ones were saying "hello" over and over again to hear "hello" from us. We still didn't have power at the house and spent another evening with candles.

On Saturday morning we decided to take a cold shower. Bob was the first. When he was done with his shower the light came on! Hurray! I had a nice hot shower and it felt great! We went to the orphanage. It takes us about 25 minutes to walk there. Since we came to Ukraine we walk a lot. I have lost a couple inches on my waist and I'm glad I have a belt. When we got to the orphanage we met all the kids. We took some pictures and ate lunch with everybody. Then we went to the park. It was a nice warm day. We had some ice cream and Flower rode several rides. Later at the orphanage we talked with our friends from the States on Skype. It was great to see and talk to somebody from home. However, that evening I started feeling sick: my throat was scratchy and my nose was getting runny. By nighttime I was a comlete mess. I had a cup of hot tea and went to bed. Today I woke up at 1 PM feeling a little better. We didn't go to the orphanage however because I didn't want to get anybody sick. We went to get some medicine and some food. We have power at the house but our fridge doesn't work so we can buy food only for one day at a time. The rest of the day we were at the house.

We heard that the Ukranian goverment encourages it's citizens to adopt. This is a good thing, but there are still so many people that don't understand adoption. The owner of the house we stay in asked me what we were doing here. I told her. She asked me what age the child is. I told her 10 yo. She said, "Oh, it is difficult to take and raise such an OLD child. Think about it". I told her that children of any age want to be loved and we alredy adopted a 10 yo and don't regret it a bit. She didn't understand me at all. We were asked by our friend in Kiev to give a testimony about our adoptions at their church. I hope we will be able to do it on the way back and I hope it will change some local people's view on adoption.

We hope next week will bring some good news. The best news will be agreement from the Ukrainian authorities on Friday in granting us a court date for the following week. It is getting closer to the day when this girl will be an orphan no more.