one vacation and one family to go

I got an update from our agency. The first family that was ahead of us in line has gotten a referral of a child and has just returned from the first trip! This means just one more family ahead of us. However.....

(see if you can predict this)

.....the government official who arranges these referrals is, yes, going on vacation for 2 weeks. So it will be at least 2 weeks before that family receives a referral, and then we will be next. It's not clear how long the wait in-between will be, because there are other agencies also working in this region of Russia, so there are other families waiting as well. Where are we in the "overall" queue? Who knows.

Please pray for good news for us in the next month.

becoming professional waiters

There is a person on an online Russian adoption chat board called "Russian waiter". It is funny how being a "waiter" becomes very defining of who you are - and I don't mean waiting tables!

When I go to those chat boards, I find people who've waited longer than us, people who are caught between trips, people who started after us but are already home with their children, and people just starting out who still have the illusion that they may have some control over the timing of their adoption. Probably the most helpful people are the ones who have gotten home and can give practical advice. There are some particular discussions we will definitely re-read once it gets closer to our turn.

Unfortunately, I have no news. I have sent an email to our agency director but haven't heard back yet, so I don't know if the two families ahead of us have made progress or not.

If you are a pray-er, here's what we need from God's hand right now:

1) Patience!!

2) Motivation for work - especially me (Sarah) because I have a lot of research on my plate and need to really push to get much of it done before the adoption.

3) Our preparations....there are little things to do (finishing some small home improvements, getting an official lead paint inspection) and some bigger things (Russian language study, preparation for unique parenting issues that may arise during the transition from the orphanage)

Some praiseworthy things are:

1) Our God who has a plan for us and our family!

2) Conveniently for us, there is a "Parenting" Sunday School class going on at church this semester, so it is really helpful to be thinking through issues of parenting with a group of people who are trying to take a Biblical approach

3) Our church Bible study home group has been growing, and discussions have been really good so far this semester. We always lose some people in the Spring at the end of the academic year, but the rebuilding has gone very well this fall.

4) My undergrads this semester (about 75 students) are great! We are having a lot of fun with Labor Economics (although, how could it not be fun? honestly?).

Thanks for your prayers, and for walking with us in this process. It is sort of surreal sometimes - I am sure that is how it will feel when we finally are given a travel date. The whole thing is sort of hazy right now, and it will suddenly be real and probably shocking! We'll be sure to let you know whenever there is news.

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!

making some preparations

Well, we still have a couple of weeks before we can get our final documents from our home study agency, and when they arrive we will be in Canada for a week...so we hope to send our new dossier on August 15. We still don't know for sure which region we will end up in...a total of 19 agencies have been reaccredited, but ours is not one of them. So assuming they are not reaccredited within 3 weeks, we will go with the new region.

Meanwhile, we thought we should be thinking ahead a bit and learning some Russian for the trip. Although we probably would have done a short/simple program for tourists, some friends were kind enough to pass along a longer course that they no longer needed. It is a completely "aural" course (all on CD's, listen and repeat, no book). It took us a bit to get used to it, but we are starting to catch on. We listen in the car almost every day. We have finished 20% of the course (6 out of 30 lessons) and I can already say some important stuff:

(note: I am making up my own spelling, because of course we are just learning how to say them, not write them in Cyrillic)

"Zdrastvuit-ye. Ya nimnoga goveroo parusskie. Ya Amerikanke. Ya khatchelee ba shtonyboot payeest."

"Izvineet-ye. Skazheechee puhzhalste, gjeuh shtonyboot payeest?"

Translations:

"Hello. I speak a little Russian. I am American. I would like something to eat."

"Excuse me. Tell me please, where is something to eat?"

I figure these will help me in any number of situations :)

I know that the language is starting to sink in, because I was trying to wake Rob up yesterday - "Time to get up!" - and he mumbled something at me. I said "What?" He repeated: "mozhitbweets poe-zhuh".

Translation: "Maybe later".

Let the games begin!!!

What games? Why, the Olympic games for one thing. Russia just won the bid for the 2014 winter Olympics.

But that wouldn't be enough to write a blog entry about. Instead, I have great news -- yesterday, on the 4th of July, seven American adoption agencies were given their reaccreditation by Russia!!! Ours was not among them (there are around 40 still waiting) but this is a huge turn in the tide. No agency had been reaccredited since April 2006. This is a symbol of a giant breakthrough: Russia has demonstrated that it is going to continue with its system of accredited agencies being allowed to facilitate adoptions (which at times people had begun to doubt). Our agency "hopes to be" in the second batch of reaccreditations (who doesn't?), and we aren't sure when they would be. However, last time Russia did reaccreditations the first two "batches" were only about 3 weeks apart. So it may not be long. But who knows?

What does this mean for us? Well, the timing is interesting. It is still another month or so before we are able turn in paperwork to switch regions. If our agency is reaccredited before that, we plan to stay with our original region. If not, we will prepare our documents for the new one and send them in mid-August. In either case, we very much hope that we will be traveling in September or October!

Fun fact: Our original region is in Siberia, and would require a plane trip from Moscow. Our potential new region is just a 3-hour drive from Moscow. While sort of attached to the old one, one nice thing about the new one was that we could at least save money from not needing those flights. Then we learned that in the new region, there is an extra doctor's visit required in Russia. Each of us would need to go to a special clinic where they do these exams (most people say they're quite brief) and it would set us back $700 PER PERSON!! Scandalous!

Finally some progress!

It is nice to write that in the subject line!

We have decided to switch regions, within our agency, to one where there is currently movement in adoption processes. (You can call me/talk to me if you want to hear the long version of why we didn't have this opportunity earlier.) So what's the scoop on the new plan?

1) While summer vacations occur in Russia, we'll be putting together new paperwork for this region. It's similar to the other one, but there are still some new/different pieces. We'll also be re-applying for our permission to adopt, from USCIS (formerly the INS, i.e. U.S. immigration). Our old permission was good for 18 months, but its associated fingerprints were only good for 15 months (brilliant, I know!) so we are redoing all of it at once. Looks like it will be free to get the update, which is a plus :)

2) In about 6 weeks, we'll send our new paperwork to Russia. There are others also waiting to adopt from this region (sorry, can't name the place for confidentiality reasons) so at that point we'll see how quickly things move. The earliest we could be asked to travel would probably be September. In the grand scheme of things, this is just around the corner, though it is still a bit of a wait. If we did get to travel in September or October, there's a good chance we'd be able to go back for trip # 2 to complete the adoption before Christmas. I am trying my best not to anticipate that, though....what can I say, I am a Christmas addict, so I always build my mental schedule around Christmas! I tend to build up anything and everything surrounding "the most wonderful time of the year."

3) My impression from others who've worked in this region is that there is generally a "waiting period" during the second trip, after you've been to court to get the adoption approved. It looks like most people are not given custody yet during that time (about 2-3 weeks) so sometimes, instead of waiting in Russia, it makes sense for people to return home and then go back to Russia once again for "trip # 3" to take custody and come home. We don't know yet how this will work itself out for us, but just thought we'd let you know what the process is looking like.

ALL THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Boy, is it ever! Please pray with us that this avenue remains open to us. My optimism has gotten very cautious these days, but things are looking up.

Looking at our options - there is hope!

I try to write on this blog once a month, whether there is news or not.

In one sense, there is no news. Russia still has not reaccredited any agencies. Our dossier remains in our assigned region (a city in Siberia) and our agency continues to hope that reaccreditation will come soon. We are less optimistic, given our experience so far.

However, in another sense, there is news. It looks like there are a couple of paths we might take to move forward with a Russian adoption. This is feeling good!

One option is to switch to an agency that is still able to help people adopt in some regions (without accreditation). This is called "independent adoption" and it is legal in Russia. Essentially, we would be hiring an agency as a "facilitator" but the adoption would not be done "through" the agency in the usual way. My understanding is that most people find the experience to be basically the same; the agency does the same amount of the work, provides the same services (translator, driver), and so on. The smoothness - and even existence - of this type of process is built on personal relationships set up between agency facilitators and regional officials. Let me say again, though, it is legal. The only downside is that it is always possible that the Russian government decides to change policy on this...but that is a risk no matter what we do (as we have learned already!). Oh yes, and the other downside is that we lose a lot of money and have to redo some paperwork.

A second option, which is better if we can do it, is to switch regions WITHIN our agency. Although they were not taking applications for a while, our agency is now starting new cases in ONE region of Russia where they have been able to set up "independent adoptions" while they wait for accreditation in their other regions. A couple working with our agency recently returned from there with an 11-month-old baby boy. Our caseworker has said that we may be able to redo just a few documents and be able to transfer the rest of our paperwork to that region instead, where we would then be able to register our paperwork with the government and actually be in the queue for a travel date!

However, the first thing we have to do, before deciding on anything, is wait for a couple more weeks. (I am sure that doesn't surprise you at this point!). The head of our agency is going to be in Russia trying to establish what is going on with the accreditation. If she returns at the end of the month with good news of truly imminent accreditation, it may make more sense for us to leave our finished paperwork where it is, because we are the first in line there for a travel date as soon as the accreditation occurs.

We have no idea where God has placed our little one. We think this child of ours is in Russia, but we simply don't know where! Please pray for us to make good decisions in the next month as we try to find the way.