Tuesday, January 2

Happy New Year! Hope everyone is doing well! We had a good day yesterday. We started it with a good visit with Sasha. He now says in English "banana", "apple", "train", and also says often "please mama or please papa" if he wants something. It's been fun to hear him! He's continuing to get more and more comfortable with us. He comes up to us more and wants to sit with us or be held. We can't wait until we can spend more time with him!

After our visit we begin the long walk back to our apartment. Along the way, although we were both tired and hungry, we decided to stop in another supermarket we had seen before and wondered what was in it. It was almost completely empty, except we heard a few people speaking English. We spoke to them and found out they are from Chattanooga, TN! They are missionaries and have been in Ukraine for about 1 year. It was great to talk to them, and they invited us to come over to their house sometime. It really felt like the meeting was arranged by God because what are the odds of us stopping in a store we had never been in before at the exact time they were in it even though they live 30 minutes away. We'll see if something more comes from it. Then we went on back to the apartment and were soon greeted by the older couple who are renting us the apartment. They had made us some Ukranian food (meat in a jello mixture, and a salad - with no lettuce). They also brought us some champagne and chocolate to celebrate the new year. It was a fun time where they shared pictures with us and we shared some with them, and the champagne was enjoyed by us all, especially the old man. All of this was in broken English and Russian since they don't know much English and we don't know much Russian. We finished off the night with Kim cooking dinner and then watching X Men 3 on our portable DVD player. What a nice day.

We are hopeful that tomorrow will be the day we get to meet with the courts and get appointed a judge, and then we are hoping the judge will hear our case in the next few days. Thanks for all your prayers.