Across one ocean and behind two families!

Our adoption agency director in the U.S. has carefully gone through all of our apostilled documents and they are GOOD TO GO! He will send them to Russia on Monday. When they arrive, they will be translated as we wait for two other families who are ahead of us in line. He expects that the first family in line should be invited to travel very soon, so then just one more to wait for, and then us!

I've been really impressed so far by the communication from the director of the agency, who is now handling our case directly because our caseworker went on maternity leave. He has been very attentive to my questions this last week and even offers other information that he expects to be helpful. Very nice!

While we wait for something to happen, we are continuing to work on our Russian. We're on lesson 10 (of 30) and we also just got a booklet/CD with vocabulary especially designed for adoptive families. It's a combination of travel help and phrases to say to children to help comfort them during transition. Although our child will likely be 1 year old and not talking, he/she (probably he) will likely have some understanding of Russian. We want to make it as easy as possible for him to latch on to us, so "sounding" familiar might help.

We'll update you (probably not for a few weeks) when we have any more news!

Success!

Our corrected documents arrived on Saturday. We went to Tallahassee this morning and got all of our apostilles, and this afternoon I sent everything out to our agency. We should be in the queue for the new region now.

Phew!

Hopefully this is our last "dossier # 1" (we did one for our old region, then an updated one for our old region, and now this one). Third time's a charm right?

I will update the blog when I hear anything about a timeline. Right now, I am just ready for the break from paperwork! We think there are still some families ahead of us, but we hope that this fall will bring at least trip # 1 and perhaps both trips. Meanwhile, it's time to get back to teaching and work on sending out some more research papers before our travels.

Thanks for your prayers, and we'll post when we have news.

Ever feel tested?

Yep, we needed our last two documents, which arrived in the mail yesterday -- both with errors. New ones are being sent today, for arrival tomorrow, so that we can go to Tallahassee on Monday instead of today.

I have never, before entering this process, been in a situation where I actually felt like physically exploding with sheer frustration. I wonder if this is how people with short tempers feel all the time. It's miserable! I actually wanted to walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs - I would have, except people would have been worried about the crazy woman outside :) There have been many times that I've been glad that they do the interviews/home study/psych exams at the beginning of the process, since the process itself can actually drive you into insanity.

Fortunately, Rob had just the ticket to calm me down last night after we got the mail - he made me chicken soup and peanut-butter toast (yes, I like them together, it was an elementary-school-cafeteria thing). And then we watched some comedy shows and a couple episodes of "The Wonder Years". Nothing like a little Kevin-and-Winnie puppy love to cheer you up. Mix that with a glass of chocolate milk and life looked a little better.

I hope, hope, hope to be writing with good news on Monday -- once we send that stuff out, then it's back to the waiting game. While we're still hoping the wait won't be more than a couple of months, one thing we have learned is that nothing is predictable. Praise God that he has a plan:

"God sets the lonely in families" (Psalm 68:6a).

And so he will, in His timing.

The switch is almost complete

We have finally reached the end of the series of documents that needed to be modified/changed/updated/created in order for us to switch regions! The last two are in the mail from our home study agency. We should get them this week, and then it's off to Tallahassee for (you guessed it) the chance to drop another $200 or so on apostilles.

(I decided not to blog about the last few weeks, which were among the most frustrating paper-chasing I have ever experienced....just glad it's over.)

After that's done, we'll send the packet to our agency and officially be in line for the new region. There are only a few people ahead of us, so we still hope to travel on our first trip in September or October if things go smoothly. We'll probably just get a week's notice.


PRAISE GOD THAT:

* We seem to have all of the correct documents, finally!

* Two families working with our agency successfully went to court last week (in our new region) and now have custody of their children!

* We had a great, relaxing vacation in Canada last week, which helped take my mind off of the stresses of this stuff

* My department has worked with me to arrange a substitute professor to teach for me when we are traveling to Russia

* Both Rob and I can use sick leave (instead of unpaid parental leave) for our adoption travel

* I have just been given the opportunity to revise another of my articles for possible publication - this is good to get done now rather than later!


PLEASE PRAY THAT:

* Our documents are indeed acceptable to our agency and to Russia

* The lineup in our new region continues to move and does not stall

* We are able to concentrate on our work and on practical preparations (rather than unproductive worrying)


Thanks to everyone for continuing to support us in this very long and difficult quest to find the child God has planned for our family. We will continue to update the blog, whether or not there is news, every few weeks - so stay tuned!