Bringing Dariya home: A visit from the birth parents?

When we arrived at the orphanage on Saturday afternoon we were informed by the groupa caregivers that Dariya's birth father (Sasha) had come by to see her just 30 minutes before we arrived.  The caregivers showed him our photo album that we had left for Dariya and told him we were leaving with her soon.  He was very happy that Dariya will have a sister with ds to grow up with. 

We learned that this couple was very young when they had Dariya (only 21 or 22 years old).  The birth mother (sorry don't know her name) has been to visit also but, we couldn't understand how recently (you know our Russian isn't that good!)

Sasha said that he wanted to shake our hands and say thank you.  Tamara (our ever protector) told Sasha that she didn't see the reason for him to come meet us.  She was surprised when we told her that we very much wanted to meet Dariya's family.  The caregivers are going to try to get ahold of him to come and meet us before we leave here.  We would love to be able to get pictures of Dariya's birth parents (even though they are now divorced) and share our email and blog address so they can see her pictures. 

We are so thankful for the blessing of Dariya and for God allowing us to be her parents.  We are very thankful that our first information about her parents abandoning her at the hospital was untrue.   This girl is part of our family, I couldn't love her more if I had given birth to her myself.

We truly are again humbled by this journey.

Sunday morning brought out the kissy monster in Dariya.  Everytime she would walk past us she would lean over and kiss us.

Love you daddy

Thank you God for all the blessings. 

Her favorite game

When we dropped Dariya off in her groupa at the end of our Sunday morning visit we were excited to see all the kids sitting in little chairs in a semi circle around their teacher, Luda.  She was teaching them something about chickens, she had a toy chicken and a book that she was reading to them.  This groupa tries their best with the kids.  But, it in no way is the same as having a family.

Monday July 4th is our last day of our 10 day wait!!!  Tuesday morning our facilitator will come down from the capital city and take us to get Dariya's new birth certificate (with our names listed as the parents) and apply for her passport! 

Please pray that her passport comes back this week, as soon as we have her passport we can pick her up and head back to the capitl for our 2 day embassy appointments then fly home. 
We are enjoying this country but are so ready to be home as a family.