Back to the beginning...

Well, we unfortunately have some bad news to share. After the judge issued another 2 week delay on Tuesday, Dave and I decided that the door was closing on this adoption. There are many, many details that we are unable to share at this moment that helped us come to this decision. What we can tell you right now is that one of the obstacles that we had to overcome was that the child had an older sister who had just turned 18 and did not want us to go through with the adoption. She petitioned the court to become guardian herself. Although the court informed us that they would probably appoint us as guardians, it was not a definite and the sister would have no doubt appealed the ruling and it would have been at least another month if not longer. We just could not see playing "tug of war" with her over this child. It would have destroyed all of us. All we can do at this point is to pray for the precious child we had grown to love.

Wednesday, Dave and I travelled back to Kiev to await another appointment. One bright note was that this train ride was MUCH better than the first. Apparently when you travel first class on the trains, you get air-conditioning! After racing to get everything packed, we made it to the train station about 10 minutes before the train left to find that the ONLY tickets available were 3 1st class tickets. Otherwise, we would have had to either wait another day or travel to another city. We quickly bought the tickets and ran to the train (with all our heavy luggage in tow!) I had visions of having to jump on the train as it was leaving! Luckliy we got on the train with about a minute to spare. Dave is constantly saying that this is the "last time this luggage is going anywhere!"

We are now in Kiev and have our appointment to select another child tomorrow. We continue to pray for God's will for this adoption. We thank you for all your prayers and for your patience in our updating the blog. As you can imagine, things have not been easy the last few days. We love you all and pray to see you again soon.

Candace and Dave