After a week-and-a-half of visiting Mikaela in the mornings, returning to our apartment for the afternoon and evening, and doing little else, we are getting ready to jump into the fray once again come tomorrow morning. Our facilitator, Yulia, is going to pick us up at our apartment at 8:00, and we have gotten the impression that we will be gone until dinner time. That means that Meghan is going to have to keep up with both Josiah and Gabriela all day tomorrow at our apartment, which, while challenging, should be better than trying to maintain order in the back of a taxi for ten hours. The kids will be able to eat, run/crawl around some inside, and watch more Curious George, Sesame Street, and He-Man than Meghan would ever like to see, I’m sure. Meanwhile, Kristie and I will be running all over Simferopol to track down various papers. As of today, we are legally Mikaela’s parents (YEAH!!), and tomorrow we are going to obtain her birth certificate—which will list us as her parents and her legal name as Mikaela Colleen Godwin—and then proceed to apply for her passport. As we understand it, this is the piece that will determine when we can expect to leave for home. Passports are normally issued between four and ten days after being applied for, and Yulia is cautiously optimistic that we will have Mikaela’s passport in our hands on Friday. If that should happen, then we think that we would return to Kyiv this weekend and try to get her medical exam and U.S. Embassy interview completed early next week, allowing us to leave for home either Wednesday or Thursday of next week. We have been praying for weeks now that we would be home and in our church on July 4. If the remaining pieces fall into place as quickly as we know that they can, then we can be home for the 4th of July. Please join us in praying for that, and in praying for Meghan and our bio kids tomorrow. It promises to be a long day for all of us, but we are grateful still to be here, officially to be Mikaela’s parents, and to be so near the end of the process. Praise God for His faithfulness!

Before wrapping this up, I am going to post two pictures, both of which were taken yesterday. The first is of us with three other families who are adopting from Mikaela’s orphanage. From left-to-right, the families are: (1) Kristie and I with Meghan, Josiah, Mikaela, and Gabriela; (2) Toby and Suzanne McDonald with Toby, Jr., who is almost 4 (they’re from Nebraska); (3) Enrico and Marina Tanteri with their son Max, who is almost 3 (they’re from Italy); and (4) Nancy Fritz—her husband Ken wasn’t there yesterday—with their son Dennis, who is four (they’re from Minnesota). The second picture is of the fathers present with their adopted children, which was a great way to spend Fathers’ Day this year. The only way to have made it better would have been for us to be back at home with all of our kids. That, however, looks to be coming in the very near future.