How to do Kiev in 16 hours

Allow me to clear up a few things regarding our last post, No- I did not have the root canal ( it would have been approx. $30.00 US on top of the Cognac, another $70.00 if they needed to replace the crown) my tooth actually started feeling a bit better that day but they had already made my appointment and I didn't want to burn bridges if my tooth didn't continue to improve. Thanks to all your prayers my tooth is better today,but rest assure that I will wait until after a root canal if needed to present payment.

Second, yes we got a 2 hour notice that we needed to be in Kiev the next day for Kevin's referral, we notified friends in the area to watch out for our kids and off we went. The train was not as gentle as the first one, Richard and I woke several time in the middle of the night almost being thrown off of our bunks with the sever rocking back and forth and the jerking to a stop and starting again. We hit Kiev with about 10 minutes to spare for our "scheduled" appointment, made it to the SDA and then proceeded to wait 2 1/2 hours for our 2 minute meeting.

We then had to entertain ourselves for then next 4 hours to find out "if" we would get our referral that day or not. At 4:00pm we still had not heard from our facilitator so we headed to the SDA to wait. at 5:30 our facilitator showed up and asked us to continue to wait, we finally received our referral at 6:00 pm just in time to miss the 6:30 train. Our Facilitator suggested we wait until then next day but not wanting to pay for an apartment for the night we asked if their was a later train. The next train was at 1:00 am, we insisted we were on it. We then had 2 hours to kill to see if we could even get tickets, we went to dinner and then basically hung out in the food court at the local mall till closing people watching. We found out at 5 minutes to 10 we actually had gotten tickets however our facilitator misunderstood and only got us 2 tickets in our 4 bed compartment ( we are really tight with our funds and have been letting him know that our money is limited so he thought he was doing us a favor, we however were ready to spend the extra $30 for privacy). We know had an additional 2 hours to wait so we went to O'Briens and slowly ordered one item, finished it, ordered it a second item, finished it and so on until our driver arrived.

Arriving at the train station we still had 30 minutes to wait until we knew what gate to take, I was not willing to let our driver go until I Knew for sure were we were going. Finally we got our gate # and had our car # so we bid our driver farewell and settled in for the night. Fortunally we did not have any company, apparently they hold certain cars for Officials and release the tickets a few hours before the train leaves- that is why we had to wait. This worked to our advantage however since the other bunks in our car were not sold.

Now in spite of all our apparent complaining and time loss I want to share God's blessing in the whole ordeal.

Blessing # 1- We were able to go to Kiev and obtain our 3rd referral

Blessing #2- We arrived safely and our kids were safe with our friends keeping watch during our absence

Blessing #3-We got our referral the same day, and got a train back the same day

Blessing #4 - We got the only gate# that did not require us to go up and down several flights of stairs and receive our own compartment yet only had to pay for 2 tickets.

Blessing # 5 My tooth is feeling much better.

Please continue to keep us in prayer, Kevin is in the hospital with a minor ear infection and a high fever, Richard has been having a few hard days with stiffness in his muscles, Praise God my toothache is gone but please pray for it not to reoccur and please pray we get back on schedule as we are well over a week behind at this point.