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 :)