WE HAVE TICKETS TO UKRAINE!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have booked our flights, and we even found rates for summer travel directly from Fort Wayne that were less than I paid for my last business trip to New Jersey! So…..we leave Fort Wayne on Sunday, 13 May (Mothers’ Day) at 1:23 in the afternoon. We have a 2 hour layover in Detroit, and then board a flight to Amsterdam. An overnight flight schedules us into Amsterdam just before 6:00 AM, and then after a very quick connection, we leave for Kiev at 7:10 AM. If all goes well, we should arrive in Kiev […]

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We had one of the biggest joys this morning….we talked with Masha on the phone! Flash back to a few weeks ago when the orphanage director was here…she left us all with a phone number for the orphanage, and told us that we could call the kids one time per month until we could come to get them. Life at the orphanage is very structured, and it’s obviously a bit of a disruption to go take the kids away from whatever they are doing, so they do try to limit the phone calls. It’s quite a privilege to be allowed […]

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My mother left this world on Sunday evening, 1 April, after a 2 ½ year battle with lung cancer. She died peacefully at Visiting Nurse and Hospice Home surrounded by our family. While I miss her terribly, I could not have chosen a better way for her to pass. The people at VNHH were the best…kind, caring, and dedicated to keeping Mom comfortable and caring for all of us during her stay. We held a family calling on Tuesday, 3 April, to say goodbye to Mom. Joined on this day with the sadness of this final goodbye was the sweet […]

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Even though Masha was not able to come to the US for the last two weeks of March, we appreciated the opportunity to host the director of her orphanage and one of the orphanage workers on Tuesday, 27 March. Mark was a tremendous blessing and a help to me in shopping, cleaning, and preparing for their visit to our home, as I was spending almost all of my free time helping tend to my mother. At about 11:30, we picked Ludmila and Kseniya up at the home where they were staying, and brought them to our house for lunch. Kseniya […]

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Right after I posted the last update, I got an email with a letter from Masha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She misses us and she just started a new dance class. She sees her friend Khrystyna often, and she is waiting for us “with great impatience”!!!!! I miss her soooooo much!!!!!!!!