God's orchestrating hand

The last several days have been a whirlwind of activity - finishing the semester, saying goodbye to friends who have graduated and are leaving, and of course getting ready for our trip. Somehow God is making it possible for us to get all of this done and still sleep at night. Tonight we will start packing so that we can see what we still need and get it tomorrow!

We got confirmation today from Russia that they received the packet of documents that we had sent to them and everything was approved -- they had already approved it based on an emailed copy of the document, but this was still a relief.

I have some special people to thank God for today. Our caseworker Geralyn pulled together all of the supplemental homestudy documents within less than a week - quite a feat (there are 5 different things, all requiring specific types of notarizations, etc.). And then there is my tireless office manager Laura who is never surprised to see me with yet another document in my hand for her to notarize. Today it was something she had already done on two sheets, that we needed to do on front and back of one sheet instead. And our department secretary Martha provides prayer and encouragement, along with handling some of the administrative stuff for my job that I would usually do myself but have had less time for lately. And my department chair has loaned us his European cell phone so that we can be in touch from abroad. And then there are the nice people at the bank who have let us trade in beat-up currency for nicer looking bills that are more likely to be exchangeable in Russia (as you might suspect, each bill is supposed to be in ideal condition to get the full exchange rate there).

Finally, a big shout-out to Donna Lutz, our real estate agent at Coldwell Banker. Why, you might ask, was our real-estate agent relevant at this point, when we bought our house 4 years ago? Well, we have a form called the "residence verification" form. It is usually filled out by the property appraiser's office (and we have one from them, in fact). However, for our new region of Russia, the form must be signed by someone who is "licensed". The property appraiser's office does not have a licensing procedure, so my caseworker said I could ask our real estate agent to verify our residence and give us a copy of her license to be notarized/apostilled. Our dear real estate agent was so happy to help us, even at a moment's notice! What a sweetie. Her only requirement was that we stop by and visit when the baby is home - which we're more than happy to do!

I am about to look through all the documents once more, but I am quite confident that we have everything that we need to be able to turn in our "court packet" in Russia. This is important because it will get us immediately into the line to wait for a court date. If we didn't bring it with us, we would have to send it from here after we get back -- which would lose precious time that our paperwork could be "standing in line" in Russia. However, our caseworker has warned me that there WILL be something wrong with the paperwork, or something else needed - there ALWAYS is something. I have tried so hard to make it perfect, but she has warned me that the rules constantly change and we just need to be flexible. Lord help me be flexible!!

We hope to get online a few times while we are traveling, so we will be posting updates if we can. I may post one more pre-travel note, but then again we may be rushing until the last minute...in any case, please pray for everything to go smoothly! We depart at 7:25 am Friday from Orlando and we will meet the baby who has been referred to us on Monday!