About a month ago, we found out that we had been transferred, yet again, to another region. After our documents made it to Astrakhan, the region came back and said that they had no boys in our age range and/or requests available for international adoption. That seems strange, but who knows. We really had no control over this so we had to just go with it and trust that the Lord was guiding us to where we needed to be.
We have now been moved to a region called Yaroslavl. Yaroslavl is north of Moscow and takes about 4 hours by car to get there. If we do stay in this region, we may actually end up taking three trips instead of two. This could be a better option for Zac as he would get to take off less time from work. We would go on our first trip a few weeks after we receive our referral and meet our child. Our second trip would take place about a month later and we would be gone for about a week for our court appointment. Then, we would come home to wait out the typical ten day waiting period before we could pick up our child. Our third trip would last a week to a week and a half and we would get our child and come home for good!
I'll be honest, the last month has been tough. We haven't really known what to think about changing regions again. The bad news was that we had to re-do almost all of our documents...again. My consultant, Leslie, really emphasized that it would be good if we could get everything done as fast as possible. So, there was some added pressure there, but then she shared about a week later that another couple had been moved to this region from Astrakhan too. She also mentioned that we were kind of in a "race" between them to get documents in the region. Knowing all of this I did everything I could to work as fast as possible. I had to do many of the documents and then Lifeline had to do the others. It is always difficult when having to work with outside sources - working on their time table and pace, having to explain how to do the documents, dealing with being in another city, etc. This was the most stressful part of collecting our documents, and we were very disappointed that we didn't get our documents from Lifeline as quickly as we had wanted.
Finally, though, after an initial failed attempt last Monday to get everything collected and certified (who knew about "Confederate Memorial Day" and that government offices close this day...ugh!) everything got mailed to Children's Hope Tuesday and then sent to Russia on Wednesday. It was the biggest relief, and I'm finally starting to feel like myself again - this really took a lot out of me (and Zac, too).
I really don't know where we stand in the region yet. We did find out that the other couple who had been moved to this region got their documents in the Thursday before we sent in ours - so they ended up being about a week ahead of us. This was upsetting at first, but I'm still not sure that this will mean they'll be ahead of us in "line." Children's Hope usually assigns line order based on how long you've been waiting. I can't imagine most people have been waiting as long as we have. Originally, Leslie had told us we would be first in this region, but that was before this other couple was moved. I'm hoping to get a clear answer on this soon.
If we are first in line, we might be able to travel this summer - maybe June or July. I am really hoping that this will be the case. We are very weary of waiting and extremely anxious to finish this adoption process.
We would appreciate your prayers for our referral to come soon and for continued perseverance while we wait. We have been struggling with discouragement lately. More importantly, please also keep our son in your prayers and that he would be well taken care of while we cannot be with him. Pray for us to be united soon.
I'll end with a picture since I haven't posted one in a long time. This was taken Easter Sunday.
And, here is Gracie's Easter picture for a little humor:
I'll try and update more frequently as I know more!
