Day Nine: Almost good news!

We've been waiting for our Homeland Security clearance to come through again (the renewal was the only document we needed in order to have a court date set), but today we learned that we already had it; we just weren't notified!

The Moscow embassy had been notified immediately when our renewal came through, but for whatever reason we weren't notified, and neither was our adoption agency! We had notified our senators and asked them to intercede on our behalf in expediting our renewal, we had prayed, and we had asked everyone we know for prayer. And the prayers were answered in a most unique way...God has shown us that the path has already been cleared long before this was ever a problem! God is good all the time!

Now we hope that we can get a copy of this notification in time to keep a potential court date next week. We can say more about this once we officially know, but for now we need a copy of our renewal notification in order to proceed here in our region.

Well that's the breaking news from here as of now, let us tell you a bit of what we've been doing lately. On Tuesday we moved to our new hotel, and may we say that we really like it! We are only two doors down from some of our new friends here (another American couple in process of adopting), and we are saving several hundred dollars a week by staying at this new place. We ate supper at the hotel, and went out for ice cream afterwards.

Wednesday we went on a nice long walk to the city's pedestrian mall and bought Vanya snowpants, a winter coat, and mittens. The point was more about taking a good long walk on a day when we had nothing in particular to do, and we just happened to find some winter clothes that Vanya will need before we leave the country! All in all it was a three hour walk that day, and we then came back and watched Alias as we relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Thursday, today, we visited the new location for the church we visited on Sunday. Right now they are only renting a place of worship on Sundays, and they have been working on this new building since 2002. These people are very patient and are building this project with no debt! We got a tour of the new building from the two pastors (one of whom speaks excellent English), and got a vision of what they want to have happen in their neighborhood. It was a real delight to see how God is at work in the region where Vanya was born! And now tonight we are "hanging out" at our missionary friends' apartment with the other American couples.

For today, please pray that our immigration paperwork does come through - we just need to show the judge that we have approval to bring Vanya home. We get to go visit him tomorrow and so will have new pictures again soon :)

Day Six: Seeing Ivan!

Ok, we didn't post anything over the weekend. But besides hanging out with our great new friends here, all we did was shopping, going to church on Sunday, and watching a movie or two while relaxing. Nothing happened that brought us closer to bringing Ivan home, so forgive us for not bringing forth all of the details.

Monday morning we find out at 9:40am that we are leaving at 11am to go to the town where Ivan currently lives (a 4 hour drive from our hotel). We arrive there at about 3pm and make a stop at the city inspector's office to give and receive updates on a number of things about Ivan. We learn a few things about Ivan's birth family (that are too personal to share in a place like this), and more or less it is all good news for us. This visit lasted about 15 minutes, and we move on to the orphanage.

We arrive and go directly to the Chief Doctor's office (she's the one who runs the orphanage...it's technically a baby hospital, hence the Chief Doctor). We hang up our coats and walk in, and what do we see?

Someone was waiting for us! Still pretty shy though, so he didn't exactly throw himself into our arms. Very cautious with us strangers, and a little more interested in figuring out this new toy that was in the doctor's office than he was in meeting new people. We move on to the "visiting room," for lack of an official name.

We don't have many toys with us, and we learn that there really aren't any toys here that he hasn't seen already, so there's not much to get him excited about.

...and I can't get this picture to rotate no matter what I do.

This is definately our little boy that we've been waiting for all this time! He eats an apple, and a little dry cereal. Actually he loved the cereal, and ate all that there was of it! We try to introduce him to the "Barrel of Monkeys," but he didn't seem interested in that either.


He did seem quite interested in the coloring book we brought though. Seemed like a good sign for the crafty/artsy parents that he has! :-) He colored for a bit with mom...






...finished off the cereal...
(I know, I still can't rotate the picture. I don't like working on a Mac!!!)






...and then did some more coloring with daddy! We only had about a half an hour to be with him, and then he had to go off and eat his supper. Perhaps we spoiled it for him with all of the food that we gave him? Who knows?





And that was the end of our time with him. When it was time for him to go, he made sure to take the coloring book with him, which was very fun for us to see! We got a few more updates from the Chief Doctor (medical updates specifically) and headed home at around 5:30. We got back to our hotel at 9:30, and that was it.

We believe that we will be able to see him again on Friday. Tomorrow we are going to change hotels, as we found one that is much, much cheaper than the one we currently are at! Otherwise, we really don't know what we have to do tomorrow. Keep praying that our INS/USCIS paperwork comes through, and that all of our documents that we had shipped DHL arrive quickly and safely.

Day Three: Notary

Most of us don't think much about visiting a notary when needing to verify various document, but here in Russia, a notary is a person of greater significance! Sometimes everything can hang on a document being "official" or not, and in the case of international adoption, you better believe that being "official" is important!

We saw the notary today at 2pm and verified our current address (which has changed since our last visit in 2005, so some paperwork needed updating). The notary read to us our petition for adoption, our court requests, and our power of attorney paperwork...all of which had to be repeated to us in English by our translator. We signed our names on 5 different documents, and then we were done! The whole thing took about 30 minutes; not a lot of time to put in to the process, but this was all that we were slated to do today.

After this we heard from our agency contact person here that she had meet with the judge who is overseeing our case! She said that everything went well, the judge just had a few minor questions. We need to produce some more paperwork, but it is all reasonable and achievable, save only perhaps our INS clearance (Homeland Security). Nearly 2 months ago we went in to have our clearance renewed, but we are still waiting for it to come through. We HAD clearance, we just need to show the Russians that we have it yet again. Knowing what the other families have gone through here, and all of the various documents they have had to produce, the news of what we have to produce for this judge is very good news (nothing unreasonable). If you are a person who prays, please direct a few in the direction of our INS paperwork coming through very soon. We can't bring Ivan home without it.

One thing we didn't tell you about yesterday is that we were able to connect with the two other American couples who are here in our region waiting for their adoption court dates, as well as an American missionary couple that have been here for 3 months. We got together and had our turkey dinner (kind of a rarity in Russia), and had our potatoes, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, and green beans. It was a real treat to have such a great meal on this holiday with 3 great couples and feel such a close connection with them all, even though we have just met!

We spent tonight with the couples waiting to adopt, and had dinner together at a local restaurant. Again, if you are looking for something to pray about, consider praying for these couples that have been here for 6 weeks or more, doing everything humanly possible to bring their child home with them. The problem is that many days, all that can humanly be done is limited to the amount of work that we did today, less than 30 minutes! The rest of their time each day is spent in a total state of powerlessness. Pray that they be sustained, that the children do not suffer, and that the system somehow be repaired.

There is nothing that we can do now this weekend to make things happen faster. We can only wait for our INS clearance to arrive, as well as the one or two others working on our behalf stateside.
Sara: CHECK YOUR E-MAIL PLEASE!
Tom H: THANK YOU FOR HELPING SO QUICKLY!
Alan & Bev: Thanks for doing a lot of the running around for us!

Tomorrow all we may be doing is a little shopping so that we have something to eat here in our hotel room. We hope the rest of you are having a wonderful holiday weekend! All our love!
Dave & Karin

Day Two: Medicals Completed!

When you look at the itinerary for this trip, you'll see that we were supposed to spend three days running back and forth from doctor to doctor, getting signatures and stamps and everything. We got a call late last night saying that our blood test results were in already, so we could continue today with our doctor visits! So while most of you in America were sleeping, dreaming of all the turkey, stuffing, and football you were going to enjoy, Karin and Dave were "showing their bellies" to various doctors.

We started today at 9:30 and went to a drug and alcohol treatment center (I'm not exactly sure why we went there...we didn't even have to get out of the car. But when the government says that you need something from them before you can bring one of their children home with you, you kind of find a way to get things done anyway!) and then picked up the results of our blood tests. We then returned to the clinic where we spent most of yesterday and received the last few signatures and stamps that we needed to. And by 12:15pm we were back at our hotel with everything done that we needed to have finished! Kind of nice when you can get done in a day and a half what should have taken three days! I guess it's just another thing to be thankful for today!

Tomorrow we are going to the notary for a few more legal papers that have expired since we were here last. We don't expect that we will be leaving until after noon tomorrow, so we know that we will have a nice, lazy morning (but when you wake up at 3am you can get a little antsy by 9, so maybe it's really not a good thing!). We are praying that tomorrow we may also find out more about our possible court date.

Our weekend plans are going to be very low-key, and by that we mean that there is nothing we can be doing officially to speed along the adoption process. We know that we can't go visit Ivan until Monday at the earliest, so we'll have to find a way to entertain ourselves in the meantime.

A short day for us, but a productive, important day nonetheless! We hope that all of you can be with the ones you love on this Thanksgiving day, and that you have then chance to tell them all how you feel. All our love is with our family and friends tonight, as well as with our dear Ivan. We cannot be with any of you this day, but we know that this trip is about bringing our family home. We look forward to being with all of you again soon!

Dave & Karin

Day One: Medicals

Well, we made it to our region capital with no problems, no lost luggage, and with no sleep for 48 hours! But really, I can't think of a better way to try and quickly adjust to an 11-hour time change than staying up for so long that you can't remember how long you've been awake.

We arrived in the region capital yesterday late evening and settled into the hotel. We got up and going right away this morning and began working on our visits to the 8 different doctors that we need to see here. For the first several meetings we were very pleased at how quickly things went! But after about noon, we began running into longer waits with one or two doctors. There were a couple times were there was a long line, but we were allowed to go right to the front! Can't say that we know exactly why that is, but it sure was nice :) The visits with each doctor aren't all that much, and we (thankfully!) only have three left to go.

One other nice thing that happened today was that we were able to connect with another American family here in our region (there are 2 others here now; 1 in our hotel and 1 in another) that is also in process of adopting and had their first trip when we did. We got to share a few stories, and were even given an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow! Kind of nice when you can make friends with someone so quickly when you're so far away from home.

It looks like tomorrow isn't going to be very eventful. We need to wait for our blood test results to come back tomorrow afternoon before we can see the rest of the doctors we need to see. We still don't know when we will be able to see Ivan yet, and we also still don't know about a court date yet. Please keep the regional court judges in your prayers, and even the entire region's adoption system, as it seems that they aren't all cooperating well with each other. Please also pray for the other families here, who have been here for several weeks. We are reaping the benefits from their time here, but it has been a long time for them to be living the wait away from home! The miracle to pray for (along with a quick court date for us) is that the 10-day wait period after court is waived. That has not been done in this region (though it has in others), and would truly be a miracle!

We have a couple random messages to pass on...
Mom - Karin's pants are at Sew & Press in downtown Anoka
Sara - We got your note about the fees. Thanks!
Kris & Tony - Could you please hook up our Christmas lights? The timer is on the red bench in the living room.


Karin's Knitting Notes - Just turned the heel on my first ever toe-up sock. Miski (love it!) on #3 DPN's with pattern from Ann Budd (Interweave Knits Summer 2007). Very interesting to not have a heel flap but short rows instead. Saving my opinion until later (now that I have a lot of leg to make these into knee highs!).

We are going!

8:30 am, Friday morning, we have one hour to decide whether to leave as scheduled on Monday or to delay until ???. We are going! We don't know for sure when our court date is, but the two families who are there now (and have been there for several weeks each, dealing with the court delays) have court on November 28 and December 3. Praise God! Several things came together for us on Friday to confirm that yes, now is the time for us to go. We are busy packing & pulling things together (since we paused on that while we waited for the decision). Irina will go visit her cousin Yola while we are gone, which we couldn't be happier about. She will have a good time and will be well taken care of (yes, our dog! We are "puppy parents").

Thank you for your prayers, even as we get ready to go. We are heading into much uncertainty, but God is before us preparing the way for us and us for His way! We can't even tell you how that is what makes the difference and has made this journey even possible for us. We are neither strong nor patient, but have a God who is ALL things.

Here we come, Ivan!

To go or not to go ...

We are scheduled to leave for Russia for our court date to bring Ivan home in a few days, but it has just been suggested that we may want to delay our trip until the problems that other families are having with the judge in our region are figured out. No one is telling us not to go, no one is telling us to go; it is "up to us". So we are praying for clarity ... what is the best thing to do? What will happen with our court date? There are 2 families that we know of there, working through the process. Another went and then traveled home to the states to get things worked out. Another has delayed their trip. And we don't know what to do! We have spent the day trying to gather information to help with the decision, while still trying to prepare to leave.