Lets try this again

Quote of the day:
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
--Albert Einstein

Hmmm, lets see if I can remember all that I wrote last night. Some of what I wrote was about today, so I will tell you what happened. ha! This morning we had our last meeting with the director of the orphanage, Antoli. This is the time that you give your gifts/donation to the orphanage and say any thank you's you might have. It was really nice. He was very kind and had a lot to say about our efforts to help the children with special needs. He is completely amazed that "our organization" (ha, Kym, Amanda, and myself with our husbands) have adopted so many children with special needs. He said out of the 15 countries that come to the orphanage we are the only "group" that has adopted these children. We assured him it was God who put it on our hearts and not our own doing. And it doesn't hurt that the children are precious, too! He was almost in tears and had me in tears. Of course, as it has so often, the institution these children would have gone to was brought up and some of the recent horrific stories. Again, God reconfirmed our goal to help these children (the adopted and not adopted children with special needs.) Okay, I am sorry. I am getting a little emotional. I just wish that we could do more and quicker. Antoli brought out an album of pictures and letters from adopting parents that went back to at least 1990. It had newspaper articles and more. It was nice to see his pride in the orphange and the children. I know we always think there must be more that could be done, and there is, but they do a pretty good job considering the circumstances I think. We also were able to give the caregivers our gifts today. It was nice to see how happy they were over some of the simplest things like a digital thermometer. Up to today, they had to go to another room to borrow the scales and thermometer. They were using the old mercury kind and had to spend 10min on each child instead of one second. Hopefully, they will be able to spend the extra time playing with the children.

I mentioned the family and our aquaintance in the car wreck last week. Unfortunately, we do not have any updates on them. We continue to pray and appreciate your prayers as well. Hopefully, we will hear something soon.

Last night we went to eat at the local pizza place (Chelantano's) with Alex, Olga, and the other couple from America. It was great. We then walked back a way that we had not yet traveled. It was really pretty. It was a street that had been devoted to a memorial of all the Soviet soldiers from the area that were killed by the Nazis. The steet is lined with blooming trees and in the middle there is a large statue of a lady (Mother earth) with an eternal flame in front of her. I am very surprised we had not seen this before. I was impressed. There is a lot of history here.

We have been invited to go to a lake for a picnic all day tomorrow with the driver from previous trips, Vova, and his family. I am really excited. I love the outdoors and a picnic is a bonus! I think we are supposed to build a fire and make shishka-bobs (sp?). I better get some sunscreen! This past week has been pretty hot, but today is probably in the 70s again with a cloud cover. Within the past week we have gone from Lance being clad in 4 layers of clothes to the caregivers asking us to buy him some sandals because his feet are too hot in tennis shoes. ha! I believe summer is really here now, though.

We want to thank you all again for all of your comments and support. I know I say this a lot, but I truly don't think everyone realizes how much their comments mean to us. Although we are not able to comment to all of them, that does not mean we don't cherish them. We look forward to coming in here each day. Then we discuss them frequently throughout the day. It has been brought to our attention, on more than one occasion, that we have accidentally hurt some of those closest to us by inadvertently not responding to their comments. I promise we did not mean to do that at all. In order to avoid this, we probably are not going to reply to specific comments anymore. Please realize that your comments are still very important to us and we will be reading them just the same. I am sorry if there is anyone else that has felt this way and has not let us know. It makes us extremely sad to know that we have accidentally hurt your feelings.

Have a good day,
John Michael and Karen