Patience and Faith

Dave sez, If our journey here to Kiev - three times - has been about any thing, it has been about developing patience and building faith. Oh, and adopting three children, two sons and now, finally, a daughter.

"...Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see...And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Hebrews 11: 1, 6)

We are here in Kiev a third time. What is the difference between this third trip and the two previous trips? Not much. We see the effects months and months of protesting has had on the city. There is a side of this city that is permanently scarred from anger. But it seems like only half. The other half still functions. The two seem to co-exist side-by-side right now. It is hard to see if the wound is healing, or ever will.

 

From Independence Square, where there is still an Occupy-style encampment, across to the burned out Exchange building, we see that the angry scar has gone up the street to Parliament, and the cathedral next to it. We saw that yesterday.

 

  



Cathy and I have to compliment our facilitator Valentin. He is working very hard to make progress with our process and schedule our court date. Cathy and I would ask all of our "prayer warriors" to lift him, the SDA and the DFC up in prayer that the consent is signed as soon as possible - Monday - and that our court date is scheduled for TUESDAY. Cathy and I really need to have our court date scheduled for TUESDAY. Valentin had told us on Tuesday that consent forms had not been signed for close to three weeks. He has been working tirelessly and valiantly to move things along. He reminded them that we had been here twice before and we adopted two sons. He also reminded them that we were a Christian, God-fearing family.

Yesterday, we had just gotten to the orphanage for our visit with Masha. The phone rang. It was Valentin. He said he needed a brief description for the SDA and DFC about our church. What type of church it was that we go to and what type of church it was that Masha would be attending when she comes home. He asked if I could write something up and e-mail it to him.

"Where are you?" He asked.

I do a pretty decent impression of Nervous Ross...

I said, "Uh...uh...we're here at the orphanage, with Masha."

Perfect, he told me. I could use the computer there to write something up and send it to him. He called Igor to explain, I called Igor to explain. Igor called me back and asked where we were.

"Uh...uh...we're here at the orphanage, with Masha."

He cleared up my confusion by asking, where I actually was. He told me that he would explain everything to Neela in the office and that everything would be fine.

Valentin called me back and together we pieced a few sentences about our Faith a church. Then I handed the phone over to Neela and he dictated/translated to her. She typed it up and we signed it.

Next, we had to get this document to the SDA office before 1pm. That is when most government offices close for lunch for one hour. It was 11:30. So, we had to move.

We just made the 507 at the bus stop; which got us to Holosiivska station and back to Maidan by 12:25. That gave us a little over thirty-five minutes to make it up the hill from Independence Square and past Parliament to the SDA office. Walking up the hill we noticed that a lot of the restaurants we had frequented on the last two trips were closed and gone out of business. The Double Coffee had a "напрокат" banner in the window. There was a Russian restaurant where we had enjoyed a great dish of both Russian Salad and Chicken Kiev, that was closed now, too. The scar had climbed up the hill from the Square to the cathedral next to Parliament where there were more tents. 

We made it to the SDA by a quarter to one. We called Valentin so that he would let someone know that we were there with the document. He had been called into a court session, so we called Igor to call Valentin to call someone to let them know we were there with the document. Valentin called us back and let us know that he would be calling a woman with the SDA named Helen, who would come out and take the document from us. She did. She said, "Thank you," in English to us.

We got a call this morning from Valentin that it was possible that the consent to adopt would be signed off on Monday, and that our court date could be scheduled for either TUESDAY or Wednesday. He would keep us informed.

If our journey has been about any thing, it has been about developing patience and building faith.

"...I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry." (Ps. 40: 1)

The One About The MLK Day

The sentence read, "MLK was a good man."

Dave sez,

There were other sentences on Ethan's paper. "The Earth orbits the Sun", "January is the first month", "Sixteen oz equal one lb." and "How much do you weigh?" In the newcomers program, Justin and Ethan have had sentences that cover topics in class during that week. Sentences about different things they cover in class like the months of the year, the holidays, geography and astronomy. Of course there's always the wild card(s) - "Sixteen oz equal one lb." and "How much do you weigh?"

Now, I could hear that Ethan was having trouble. Like his brother, he has trouble with small, transitional words. The little words; "the" and "a". So, what they both would see and read aloud would be, "January is first month." My Grandma Sophie, from Norway, never lost her thick accent and pretty much talked the same way. So we fixed that first sentence. Instead of "January is first month." Ethan re-wrote it as "January is the first month." We worked on his pronunciation of "Jan-yoo-airy"; and then, "or-bit". I looked at "oz" and "lb" and he re-wrote that as "ounces" and "pound". We worked on rounding and softening his pronunciations, like "how" ("How now brown cow") and "How much do you weigh?"

And then, there was that sentence.

"MLK was a good man."

What's "MLK" Ethan?

MLK.

Yeah, but what is it?

I dunno.

Is "MLK" short for Martin Luther King, Ethan?

Yes.

Tell me about him, Ethan.

He vuhs a gut man. Ethan grinned. He giggled a little.

He was a "good man", huh? What made him a good man?

I dunno. Church?

Ethan, did Martin Luther King believe something very important? Like, say maybe President Abraham Lincoln, that all men are created equal?

Yeah.

This was such an opportunity.

I thought I would put in a way that Ethan and I could connect.

Ethan and I have some things in common. I am discovering that he is a comic book geek just like me! That's Christmas, Father's Day and my birthday! While he is not a Batman fan, he is a Green Lantern fan.

Green Lantern Alan Scott

Nope, not that one. That's the original, Golden-Age Green Lantern, Alan Scott. There is a legend that he may have been modeled on actor Alan Ladd. That may be just an urban myth, like Batman's supposed to be.

Green Lantern Hal Jordan

Nope, not him either. That's test pilot Hal Jordan. One of the greatest Green Lantern's ever. There's a legend that he is modeled after actor Paul Newman. He was played by Ryan Reynolds a few years ago in a film that could have been - and done - better.

Guy Gardner

Nope.

Kyle Rayner

Nope.

Green Lantern John Stewart

Ethan is a fan of John Stewart. Which is pretty cool, because so am I! I'm a fan of John Stewart

Not to be confused with Jon Stewart.

I gave Ethan a couple of my comics with John Stewart.

I pointed at Alan Scott and said, MLK - Martin Luther King, Jr. - believed that there was no difference between him - Alan Scott - and him - John Stewart. He believed that they would both be heroes.

There was a time when being a Dad seemed like a far-off dream. I've been living - and sometimes struggling with -  my dream for just a couple of years now. This is as new to me as it is to my boys. We're all in the newcomers program. Together.

Most importantly, I have a dream that my boys grow to become good men. That they stand on values and beliefs. That they stand on truth, honesty and hard work. I hope I can teach that example.



²⁶ So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, ²⁷ for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

~ Galatians 3: 26 - 29