Last Minute Stuff

Well, it is 10:45 pm, 36 hours short of flying to Kiev, and our task list is shrinking, down to about 20 now.  These past few days have been a frenzy of activity.  Tonight, Nellie and I took a break and joined our friends Tom and Kim at Kramarcyks in Minneapolis.  They have eastern european fare that we had to try, and Kim and Tom know this stuff better than us.  My eyes were opened about the area near Central and Hennepin Ave.  What an interesting place to eat and shop.  The food was so good that they practically had to roll Nellie and I out of there....I was so full, the sight of the pastries and treats made me feel like I was going to give birth.  Nellie loved the borscht, and said I had to try it.  It looked like a mash of blood in a bowl.  I tried  to pass, but she said, it's good.  Sorry to say I tried it...not as awful as I thought, but I'd like to avoid borscht in Kiev, Thank You.

 The photo above was taken by a Church group who was visiting the orphanage.  Note that you can see Anya on the left.  You can also see four of the Haak children, and I think one of the Cantu kids.

 This was a photo Jeanne Ritzman took shortly after passing along a message to Anya from Mama and Papa.

This is Andri Haak holding Artium.  Andri always has such a nice countenance in pictures.  He looks so content.

We are  taking the first week in Kiev and treating like a vacation.  There may be restrictions on when we can see the kids, so we're going to make the most of this, and really enjoy seeing this new city and culture. 

We had to retreive some documents at Pat and Zina's place tonight, and Nellie and I stopped in for a nice visit with them.  Zina has a lot of great stories, and Pat is such a nice person.  They are really great people, really worth getting to know.  Zina is like an adoption encyclopedia.  I don't want to know the details she has to deal with.  Talk about drive and ambition though.  It was so fun to visit with them, I actually asked if we could come back and visit again, after the adoption.  Pat graciously said, sure!

I wish you could understand what it means to Nellie and I that so many people have asked, "What can I do?", or can we pray for you?  Some people at work have been huge cheerleaders of this process.  I felt so much joy today at the encouragement of a coworker at 311, I told her I needed  to give her a hug.  Not a real city thing, but this whole adventure is about people, and we are SO blessed to be surrounded by such uplifting and helpful friends and coworkers.  Thanks for your many prayers and for following our blog!  We'll post when we get our network set up in Kiev and show you some photos from our trip.  I'm pretty sure we'll have  a couple zombie photos.  Zach and I won't easily sleep on the plane.  We enjoy the travel and the distractions.  We're going to try to get the whole cabin to sing Happy Birthday to Zach.