Pictures of Oleg

Yesterday was an eventful day here in Kerch.  We had our appointment with the school director (Superintendent in our system) yesterday.  Oleg wrote out 2 statements in cursive stating his desire to be adopted by us!   One goes to the Kerch city court, where we will have our hearing whenever they can schedule it, late July is possible; and the other one to the government of Ukraine in Kiev. Our facilitator will need to travel ti Kiev next week to submit and oversee our documents there for a time.  We will remain here and meet with Oleg as often as we can.
We then went swimming in the Black Sea to celebrate.  Oleg is quite the acrobat and always needing to move.
For our Social Security system Oleg needed to choose a middle name.  He wanted Kevin - you may recall the movie "Home Alone", he said that this was the motivation for his choice.  I guess it will be awhile before we leave him home alone!
He has been off from summer camps for the past week.  He may have to go to one more called Camp Hope, run by some churches in Kiev.  The Kerch people go to Kiev and vice versa.  Oleg would stay here and we may be getting the usual 1 -2 hr visits with him.  We've been blessed with 4-6 hrs lately and that puts quite a workout for us!
The adoption is not final even if the court agrees, there is a 10 day period for immediate family to lodge protests.  After this period there is about 3 more days in Kiev at the American Embassy getting immigration documents.
Here are the first pictures more sure to come!

Oleg diving from a raft, it's tough to get good shots, he jumps quickly and with enthusiasm. 

After a day of swimming

Oleg Kevin Ammala 

Taken outside of his school 

Church in Kerch

Last week we met a woman named Natasha, she helped us with translation at the notary's office. She shared with us that she adopted a child several years ago and that her daughter is going to have surgery. Darwin told her that we would pray for her. She asked if we were Christians, we said yes and she invited us to church. It is a small church that is very alive spiritually. The worship time was great, and the message. They asked Darwin to share his testimony and about why we are here. It was a wonderful time.

After the service Natasha took us out to a very nice lunch. She has many tips about things to do in Kerch and good places to eat. It was a real blessing from God.

We are leaving soon to get together with Oleg. Today we want to talk to him about a middle name. The adopted kids always choose a middle name to put on their new birth certificate.

New Apartment

We found an apartment that will cost less than half that the hotel did. We will be able  to do our own cooking. There is air conditioning and two bedrooms, kind of. We will be sleeping in the living room, the room  with the AC. Our facilitator doesn't like AC as much as we do. :-)  We can stay in this apartment until July 22nd. We will have time to find another one.

We met Oleg for lunch and then went shopping for flip flops, shorts, and a T-shirt. We paid attention to the price and got something more reasonable. He has definite ideas about what he likes. We looked for a long time for a certain pair of shorts And finally found them! We were going to go with him to watch him do a different trampoline thing but he wore us out. We sent him on his way with a little money in his pocket so he can jump with his friends. 

Oleg seems to be getting more and more comfortable with us. We can make ourselves understood a little bit. Darwin is doing so well with Russian. I am progressing a little. This is kind of an odd time in our relationship with Oleg. We aren't his parents yet, we won't be until after the court date, 10 days before we can come home with him. He hasn't even signed the paper yet saying he wants to be adopted yet. He will do that on Monday. We can show him love, we can try to teach him little things but we can't really tell him what to do and what not to do yet. It is so fun to see him enjoying things he hasn't been able to do before. He was a little disappointed that we wanted to go back to the apartment after a day of shopping. He dealt with it OK and we can look forward to time tomorrow.

Our internet access isn't working yet, but our phones can be mobile hot spots.  Our landlord has called the ISP and they told her and her son that they need to come to the roof of the building to connect us up.  Once we have a regular connection we'll post pictures.  This could happen later today or even tomorrow. Hopefully by Monday.

Looking for apartment

We are going to look at an apartment this morning. We might be off line for a few days!

Busy Day!

This is the time in the adoption process when we spend as much time as possible with Oleg. We met him for lunch and took him shopping for swim trunks, he wanted to go swimming with friends. While he was swimming we went to the notary to have a document drawn up petitioning for the adoption. Notaries are lawyers here. That took quite a while. Then we met Oleg at the pool. Then the show began. He was jumping in the pool, splashing other kids, throwing girls in the water. He wanted me to get pictures of it all. Then he moved to the pool with the diving boards and wanted more pictures. He is very athletic and was in constant motion!

For dinner we went for pizza. Oleg was very hungry and was impatient waiting for the pizza to come. He talks pretty freely, in Russian. Our facilitator is so helpful! It is a challenge thinking of questions to ask him so we can get to know him better. He really likes electronics so we let him play Angry Birds on my tablet. Kids everywhere know about Angry Birds. After all the activity Oleg ordered an energy drink with his pizza. I don't think he really need it!

After pizza we went shopping for shorts and a T-shirt. The shop we went into had very little for kids his size. He found something he liked, he is very particular. We went to pay for it and discovered we have to pay more attention to price. It turned out these items were very high quality, from Italy. $90 for shorts and a T-shirt!

On the way home we walked through a tourist area and there was a trampoline thing Oleg wanted to jump on. This kid loves to jump and he has never been able to do these things before. It was fun watching him, laughing at his antics, and taking pictures.

Today we are meeting him again. We will see what adventures are in store for us!

A Happy July 4th!

After a 20 hour train ride we arrived in Kerch at 1:30 pm. The train was not too bad. It was overcast and cooler so we were able to sleep pretty well. We found a hotel and then went to see the inspector. She went with us to see Oleg at the orphanage. He is 14 but small for his age. He is very cute! We had a great time talking to him. We showed him pictures of our house and answered questions about where we live. He wants to have parents all to himself. That is what he would get with us. He asked us about what happened with the girl we were going to adopt. He knew we had been at another orphanage. We told him that we have been praying for two years about adopting a child from Ukraine. We thought it was going to be a girl but God led us to him and we are very happy about that. Oleg is happy about possibly coming to America. His favorite sport is soccer and he loves the beach. You should have seen Darwin trying to describe and act out playing baseball.

Nothing is definite yet but Oleg sounds very positive about being adopted by us. We both really like him and think he will fit in well with us. As the days go on we will spend as much time with him as possible to get to know him. Because it is summer he has a little more freedom to be away from the orphanage. If all goes well he will sign a paper soon saying that he wants to be adopted by us. Tomorrow we will start the paperwork here. All that will lead up to a court date.

The hotel we are staying in for now is close to the Black Sea. It is beautiful. We are going to try to find an apartment so that we can do our own cooking. Apartments are usually cheaper than hotels.

We will post pictures of Oleg when the adoption seems more certain. We appreciate your prayers!

Our Time In Kiev

Sorry it has been a while since we posted. We have had a busy time the last few days. A mission team of 4 from Kentucky stayed at our facilitators apartment one night before going back to the states. We met them at the International Church in Kiev. It was great to go to worship and hear a good teaching in English. After church we went sightseeing in Kiev and then came back to the apartment and had pizza delivered for dinner. It was fun getting to know the people on the team. They had been at an orphanage ministering to the kids.

Yesterday we met Tim and Christina Emerson and their two cute kids in town. They are missionaries from our church. We had lunch at TGI Fridays and then spent the rest of our time together walking around the city more. It was great to see them! After they left to go back home we met up with our facilitator and another couple that is adopting for some shopping and then headed back to the apartment.

Today we had our final appointment at the adoption center. It went very well. We will pick up or referral to go see Oleg tomorrow and will board a train to Kerch. If all goes well, we will spend almost all of the rest of our time in Kerch. If Oleg says yes to the adoption we will spend time with him almost every day, work on paperwork, and wait for a court hearing. We will keep you posted!