Okay, update on the process, and the uncertainties.

First off, read this article on just how thoughtless and selfish people can be.  How could you just send a child back?  What adult fears a seven year old?  It isn’t possible that they couldn’t have known this was a possibility.  You can’t give back an adopted child any more than you could give back a biological child. 

So what this means, I just don’t know yet.   Russia’s foreign minister has called for the suspension of all US adoptions.  That would be an extremely bad for our family.  We’ve drained finances.  Pooled resources.  We’ve jumped through every hoop they’ve asked.  Flown 20,000 miles.  Spent a week apart from our children.  And the worst of the worst, we’ve promised two boys in orphanages that we would come back for them.

So pray for us, pray for the boys, pray for the wisdom of those making the decisions, pray for those who are worried both in the US and Russia that their livelihoods are at stake, pray for those who sent their unaccompanied seven-year-old child to another country.  I suspect they have more pending problems than an unruly child.

What we do know is that God is in control.  He is sovereign over kings and leaders.  He is sovereign over adoptions, too. 

As for where we are in the process, at this point we are going to continue as we have been.  We have everything completed except mailing one letter and the second part of our psychiatric evaluation.  Yes.  In six days we will have every document sent that we need to request a court day.  Six days. 

As for the new round of paperwork, it was really overwhelming at first. I’m sort of surprised they didn’t want to know the dimensions of individual rooms of my house.  Oh wait… they did!

The thing about the new portion of paperwork is not that we had more paperwork to do, but that we had already done most of it.  And had it notorized. This year. 

Some things we got to do were: have the children already in the house have a medical exam, give information about our finances (already done once), have a criminal background check (already done three times- with the city and two states), information about our house (including a copy of the deed), letter from our employers stating that we are employed (already done), and psychiatric evaluations (which, I admit, we hadn’t done yet).

We are getting a bedroom ready!  We got Erin moved downstairs so the boys can have her old room- the biggest one. We are almost finished painting it.  Each wall is a different color.  It is going to be the most awesom est room ever.  We are going to paint Sam’s room and give his old bed to one of the boys and give my old futon to him.  So that means the only furniture we have to get is one toddler bed and one (or two!) chest of drawers.  So if you know anyone who has a chest of drawers who wants to get rid of it (and, you know, actually know me outside of the blog…) then let me know. 

Other prayer requests are that all of the paperwork gets filled out correctly and quickly.  For finances to work out-we still don’t know where all of the money is going to come from, but it has all worked out so far and trust God that it will continue to work out.  For all of our children- for the adjustments our first two will have to make and for the changes coming to the two in Russia right now. 

We are not giving up hope.