Hey From Kiev

thanks for your encouraging emails and for pointing out the reality that Anastasia has been waiting TEN YEARS - what's another week or two for us. Also thanks for taking care of our boys. Just about every email we rec'd had a note about having dinner with them, seeing them at park, at church, delivering cookies, etc. THANK YOU!!! Rachel is doing well at UK and has done a massive shopping trip for ANastasia - when the lady at gap outlet heard what she was doing, she gave her the employee discount!!

Had a good day yesterday. As we approach the orphanage when we first hit the property we hit the GREEN FENCE. It's this big ugly iron fence painted green. We drive by about 1 1/2 blocks of it before we hit the entrance. Yesterday when we approached the entrance guess who was hanging on the gate!!! Holding her Fuzzy Blue purse and wearing her watch from her birthday. She immediatley started going nuts jumping up and down - then slipped through the fence - the fence apparently isn''t very effective for skinny little girls. We had bought some needlepoint - so we did that together which she thought was real fun - she is VERY PRECISE! Played some games and just hung out. She was showing kids her picture album and pointed to our house and told them all "MY HOUSE!" first time she has done that. Also continues to show everyone Rachel, VWesley (She adds a V to it) and Carter's pictures - very proud of them. We bought this fun Englis'h/Russian book with all kinds of acitivities that she loves and there was a section on family and it talked about cousins. So we were pointing out all the cousins from the Dicken Family picture taken just a few months ago. She kept falling back on the couch like she couldn't handle all those cousins - joking of course - and we couldn't figure out how to tell her that's only one side of the family!!! ONe of her caretakers asked yesterday when would ANastasia be going to America - so they are ready for her to leave!!!! :) The other kids have been asking Yuri if he could please find them parents like he did for Anastasia.

So even though we have no new news, our spirits are better and we realize that God is in control and can work with the system here - just might not be in our timing. Yuri is going to meet with judge today hopefully. We have supposedly
been assigned to a judge, but right now there are only 3 adoption cases pending and they like to have more and do them all at once. Of course if they have too many you have to wait. . .

I knocked over about 200 books in the book store yesterday so that gave us a laugh. Think dominoes with a 10 foot shelf of books - it was quite impressive.

Thanks for your continued prayers for a quick court date and waiving the 10 day waiting period.

Love,
Kim and Mark