Day 3 SDA Appointment Day

Today was our appointment at the State Department of Adoption. What an adventurous day; our first appointment was for 9:00 AM, but didn't know it. No problem, after our facilitator spoke with the SDA, we got the appointment rescheduled for 12:00 PM. This became our second dilemma of the day; the great Zenon forgot the passports. The appointment was then again rescheduled for 4:00 PM. If anything went awry at this appointment, big problems, like no appointment at all.

After retrieving our passports and a light Italian lunch, we headed back to the SDA. We anxiously awaited for our appointment. The fear of the unknown is probably one of the hardest things to cope with. Our time finally arrived and we nervously went into the SDA's conference room to begin the process. (footnote: the ladies at the SDA were very gracious and helpful throughout our "double day"--Monique called it that because we traveled there twice)

Zenon & Monique in front of the SDA

They conducted a brief interview and then began showing us the children's "files". These consisted of a picture of the child and a summary of pertinent information in regards to each child or children. As we looked though the various files that were given to us, one of the SDA workers asked how many children we were officially approved to adopt. We kindly let them know that we had been praying about two children, but that we had applied for up to three children. In typical Ukrainian fashion, the ladies retorted "well look at this file, it has two beautiful boys and two beautiful girls. Never mind the quantity, we can get you approved for four."

Deep breath - at this point I began taking my queues from Monique. A quickly panicked face let me know to press on. We continued to seem to come back to one particular file. We were then shown a number of files with children that had various special and medical needs. The question kept going on in my mind - how will we know who the right children should be. My heart pains for the many siblings that we felt we had to pass on. Eventually, after continuing to come back to a particular file, we had made our decision.

We would like to announce the newest members of the Horb Family: Pyclan (Ruslan), Yupiu (Yuri), and Alina. We will be traveling to Ternopil(near Lviv). Ternopil can be found by looking directly west of Kiev and slightly south. We we be traveling train Tuesday evening. We will leave on a 11:56pm train, for a seven hour ride. These trains are called sleeping trains. It's interesting to me how travel is done here, since most people don't have cars--they uses public transportation. When we went to the train station tonight (at around 10:30) to get the tickets for tomorrows trip, the train station was bustling with lots and lots of people travel and getting tickets.

Once we arrive in Ternopil on Wednesday morning we will with Valery to the Inspectors office to get permission to go to the orphanage to meet the children and continue the paperwork process. Please continue to pray as we venture out to the beautiful Ukrainian western oblast of Ternopil.