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