Day 16 - Vagif arrives!!!! Monday Oct. 3

Wow, I can not believe how blessed we have been on this trip. God has worked it out for Vagif to take the train to Sumy to come to see us. We were so excited for him to arrive. I could hardly sleep the night before. And until he called from the train, I was not sure it would really happen. His train was scheduled to arrive at noon. So we took our time getting ready that morning. But as the time grew closer, Darren kept saying, "Is it time yet?...Is the taxi here to take us to the train station?"
Finally, it was time. We took the taxi to the train station, Ksenia had arranged it for us that the taxi would wait until we had Vagif and then would drive us back to the hotel. Once again, Darren called dibs on the first hug. I took the photos!
The train was late...ughh, we were going crazy waiting. But it finally pulled in and was very long, so we had no idea from what car he would emerge. We were at the wrong end, so we walked toward the other end and saw him! What a huge smile on his face as he walked down the path to meet us! It seemed surreal to have him there with us. He looked great! He looked very happy! I have a feeling, we looked pretty happy, too!
We took the taxi back to the hotel and left him settle a bit. We were still sharing the room with Tonya, Tressa and Vitaly, so we did the introductions all around. We took a little while to show him some photos of the family on Facebook. Then around 6 am US time, we called our neighbor to try to catch Derek to say Hi before he went to school. The two of them had gotten to be good friends over hosting. At first they thought it was a prank call, so I had to try a couple times and tell them it was me! We did connect and the boys got to talk a few minutes.
We had arranged to meet Anika, one of the missionaries who is a part of Open Arms Ukraine. She had arrived back in country a few days earlier and promised to give us the scoop on Sumy that afternoon. We walked down to McDonalds at 2:30pm and met Anika and Chelsea who would also be ministering with them for the next three months. Tonya, Tressa and Vitaly were also with us, so we had a big group walking around and locating good places to eat, to find souvenirs and things to do. Then we decided to go to a cafe for some snacks. We had thought that Yarik would call, but had not heard from him. Finally, we got a call from Ksenia that he was with her, running all over trying to get medical documents signed. They planned to meet us at the cafe. While we were there, Anika got a call from one of the boys they are working with and he got out of school early and was on his way to meet us as well.

So eventually, Yarik and Sasha joined us and we had a big party at the cafe! Okay, not much of a party, but our group had swelled to 9 people! When we left the cafe, we parted ways with Anika and her friends. The rest of us went back to the hotel. Later we decided that we would go out for dinner at the New York Cafe and we were glad to have Vagif translate for us to try to order dinner. This time we all got exactly what we wanted!
Tonya was hopeful that they would get Vitaly's passport the next day, so she and Tressa worked on getting some of their things ready to pack. We just hung out with the boys until it was time for Yarik to take the bus back to school. Darren and Vagif walked him out. As we had done some room switching, Darren and Vagif went up to the double bed room. Vagif was pretty tired, so he did not last too long this time. Darren had work to do so he was up for a while on the computer...I was tired as well, and went to sleep, as did the others in my room.


Note on sleeping in this room: it has radiant heat and it is so hot! We have asked to turn the heat back, but it was still uncomfortable for sleeping! I am sure that Darren would have been totally miserable to try to sleep here!