We are in Paris....Our flight out of Denver started to board and then right before they got to our boarding section the doors to the plane were shut and the gate agent said, "We have a mechanical problem and will update you at 11:45."



We only had a small window to make our connecting flight in Chicago, so like the occasionally impulsive person that I (Michele) am, Bruce and I ran over to costomer service to see what options we had. Our flight got pushed out another hour in the meantime so we had to change everything if we were going to make it out that day.



We prayed hard for the right customer service person, and G0d truly delivered. Our guy, George Q., spent 45 minutes with us, typing quietly and feverishly to get us out of Denver to Kiev by Monday afternoon. He was able to re-route us from Chicago through Paris, where we are now awaiting our flight to Kiev.



More soon. WiFi access running out and must eat a baguette while in Paris!! :)


Bruce & Michele

PS. Michele says that Percaset made her fluent in French! :)

Packing, Packing, Packing...

We're packing. And washing. And packing some more. And running to the store to pick up stuff, like an extra deoderant since, well, you never know when you'll run out and I certainly don't know the Russian or Ukranian word for "deoderant".

The big suitcase is 48 lbs...so I think that means it's full! :)

We had a great time of prayer with our friends at Jim and Kari's house last night. Thanks Volfs for hosting that!

11:46 AM tomorrow we'll be in the air and on our way. Hard to believe we've finally arrived at this point. Please keep praying for our kids while we are away. They will be in good hands, but will certainly be experiencing some stress in their lives while we're away.

Please also pray for the kids we will meet and the Ukranian officials with whom we come in contact. We want the process to go smoothly, but we also want to shine the light of Jesus to all.

Thanks for thinking of us over the next several weeks.

Bruce

Michele here, Bruce is so good at blogging.

Keep praying. We need to iron out some things here before we leave...cat care, dog care and most importantly kids care. Our original plans in those areas have changed, so I need to work those out this week.

Friends have given us a list of people to possibly meet in Kiev and Kherson ( the area where the girl we are trying to adopt is). How exciting to have contacts who speak Ukainian or Russian already!

7 days....I got to go.

Lodging Arrangements Made

Well, my company came through again (thank you Coalfire!). One of the co-founders said that I could use as many of his free nights for our initial stay in Kiev when we arrive. Unfortunately, none of the hotels for which he had points and free stays are in Kiev. :(

But then he told me that he would be happy to pick up the bill for our 3 nights in Kiev when we arrive on September 21st! I can't say enough thank you's to my colleagues and friends at Coalfire for their support!

So, we will be staying at the Khreschatik Hotel right on the main drive across from Independence Square and very near to the SDA offices. They have apparently been doing renovations on this hotel for a while, and if you look at the tripadvisor comments, they have not been very good until recently. The reservations person made sure to reserve an "updated" room for us and we'll report back how things go once we arrive.

Our friend Heidi also found out for us that Bible House in Kherson is available during our stay. So, we have a place to stay in Kherson as well! Yay! Heidi and another friend (Carol) will be travelling to Ukraine next week to visit the orphanage in Kherson and we hope to see them when we arrive in Kiev.

We had a (hopefully) small hiccup in our "childcare" arrangements over the weekend. My Dad fell on Friday and has been in the hospital since, awaiting an angiogram on Monday. They think it might just be a medication issue, but want to make sure they don't miss anything. In any case, Mom and Dad were planning on coming out for about 2 weeks while Michele and I are gone, but now it looks like they will not likely be able to. My niece will still be here for the first week, and we are fortunate to have a good friend at church who is available to be here during the rest of the time that Michele will be gone. Thanks Natalie!! Mom and Dad may still be able to come for a shorter period of time, but only time (and doctor's orders) will tell. Please pray for my Dad (Al) that all goes well on Monday.

Well, 1 week to go and we'll be heading to Kiev via Chicago and Dusseldorf, Germany. Lots to do before then. Stay tuned.

Travel Arrangements Done!

We have our tix to Kiev nailed down. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the company I work for offered to use corporate "points" to purchase our round-trip tix from Denver to Kiev. Unfortunately, we ran into a snag because there was a 21-day advance purchase requirement and we only had 20 days in advance of our departure date. But, a couple of folks went to bat for us and got the 21-day advance requirement waived. Yay!

Then we hit another snag in that the ticket prices Michele and I had come up with were consolidator fares and the prices for the same flights from the points travel agency were 50% higher. So, while we had hoped to get both flights, due to the increased fare we were able to get only one. But this is still a huge help and we are so thankful for Coalfire's support of this process.

Once we got Michele's ticket nailed down using points, I called the folks at Golden Rule travel and they arranged all of my flights to match Michele's on the outbound. He even had to go to bat for us and "steal" some S fare (the lowest cost humanitarian fare) seats to get us the best price. Thanks Eldon! We highly recommend Golden Rule to anyone needing a humanitarian fare. They have been very helpful.

So, Michele and I depart on September 20 from Denver and after stops in Chicago and Dusseldorf, Germany, we arrive in Kiev, Ukraine at 2PM on Monday the 21st. The plan right now is for Michele to return on October 16th, assuming everything goes smoothly. I will stay another 2 weeks and am currently scheduled to return with child(ren) on October 31st, again, assuming everything goes smoothly.

Michele wanted me to let everyone know that she is definitely in "nesting" mode. She can't stop buying things for these kids and making sure everything is ready for their arrival. (Please pray for me.... :) )

Hi ,

At first I didn't even see that people were making comments on the blog. I know "techno-stunted" that's me. Now that I have seen the comments I'm so thankful for your prayers and encouraging words. Thank You.
M

A Date with the SDA!

I came into work at my "sort of" usual time this morning around 6:30 and checked our family email. There in our inbox was an email from Oleg. I think my heart skipped a beat or two because I thought that either:

1. Over the last few days the SDA had re-read all of our documents and rejected them all and wanted us to start from scratch; or
   
2. We had a date with the SDA.

Fortunately for us, it was the latter! We have been asked to meet at the SDA on September 23rd at 11:00AM! So, now it is really time to start packing and making travel arrangements.

On that latter topic (travel arrangements), I sent a note to all my colleagues here at Coalfire last week letting them know what was going on in our life with the adoption and included this blog address. A short while later, one of the co-founders sent me a very gracious note saying that we have so many miles on our corporate credit card that we should see if we can use miles for our airfare! He also said he has multiple free nights in various hotels that we would be more than welcome to use! Wow! This is huge and we are very grateful to all 3 of the co-founders of Coalfire and all of my colleagues for their support.

That's it today. Maybe Michele will post something later, but I had to get this news up as soon as I had it.

Thanks again for your prayers! Keep them coming.

Bruce