Getting Ready :)

I've officially pulled out the suitcases and started organizing items for our trip :) Yay!! This is the fun part....all the other prep is stressful, but this actually makes me excited to bring home our little boy!!!

We received our visas back today, and it all looks great to me! Thank goodness we don't have to worry about that this time :)

My office is throwing us a little shower on Tuesday, so that will be fun!

Counting down the days.......one week from Friday!! Yay!

COURT DATE.....again

Ok, so I was feeling like a very bad blogger for not posting last week as soon as I found out (on Wed) that we had a court date for April 6th! Yay!! We've been busy getting ready, and I was on top of everything. I booked our tickets, sent our visa paperwork off to be processed, etc. etc. I was feeling grrrrrrreat (as Tony the Tiger might say).

So, I get a call from my family coordinator this morning and knew it was important for her to be calling instead of using email. She said she had some important news. The judge decided (at this moment in the conversation I was imagining the worst possible scenario in my head, which is that the judge was requesting paperwork from Wes's stay in Africa. We all know this would pretty much be impossible.) that her schedule was too full on April 6th, and she was moving our court date to April 13th. Well, that was quite a relief to me :) (compared to what I was thinking) And not only that, but I had an extra week to prepare for the trip!

Unfortunately, it adds more stress to Wes's life (poor guy - like he needs any!). His grand opening was scheduled for May 1, which is now the date we are flying home from Russia. So, he's having to move a lot of things around, but I know it will happen.

The most frustrating part of all of this was moving our flights - the first lady was super helpful, and she got us the right dates, but her system wasn't working correctly. She had told me they would waive the fees for changing the tickets, since the change of court date was out of our control. But, the guy she transferred me to to actually re-issue the tickets was not so helpful. I know he was probably just following protocol, but it was still very frustrating. He told me that I would have to have a letter from the court explaining the change in court date. I tried to ask if I could have something from the agency....that there was no way I could get something from a court in Siberia!!! He obviously didn't understand or didn't care. Anyway, $500 later we have our tickets changed.

SO - APRIL 13th is our officially updated court date :) YAY!!!!!!!! Can't wait to see him. Please pray for our sanity - thanks for checking in!

I've GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Praise the LORD - my USCIS form I-171H came in the mail today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woohoo! I'll be busy on Monday getting it notarized and then driving to Nashville to have it apostilled and overnighted to our coordinator!

YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pray Pray Pray!

I got an email from my family coordinator today saying that they are submitting our paperwork to the court without our I-171H, and they are trying to get us a court date for April 20. We REALLY hope we get this date, b/c she said if our court date is any later we'll have to red0 our medicals in Moscow that we already completed on trip 1 (about $1,700!!!). We should hear next week for sure.

Seriously?

Wow is all I can say to the email I received yesterday from my family coordinator! She asked me the status of our I-171H and told me that they went ahead and submitted our paperwork to court. They expect a court date to be issues next week sometime, and they think it will be in April.

This is definitely an "up" on the up and down roller coaster, but it totally through me into a tailspin yesterday. All I could do was laugh, b/c this whole process is so unpredictable to me! I'm very excited, but will remain guarded until next week. I'm also praying we get our I-171H back soon!

Something Positive

I know my last several posts haven't been very positive - at least they are truthful and fully express the range of emotions felt during this adoption process. Twice recently the Lord has reminded me with two different scriptures that I should be thankful and praising God for these difficult times.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

I pray that I am learning perseverance in my walk with God, and that my faith is being increased. I also pray that GOD is glorified through this entire process.

For those of you who don't know everything about our lives, Wes just opened a new business last week - an auto repair shop named Christian Brothers Automotive. It's a franchise, so you may have heard of it. So far things are going great, and we are both so thankful. We are thrilled the Lord has blessed us SO much for so many reasons. It really hit me that as frustrating and difficult this adoption paperwork is, that I should be SO thankful for all the ways God is blessing us. He's blessed us to be able to open the business and complete our adoption in the same year!!!!! Not without a lot of stress, but how awesome is that??!! The hymn sung at church on Sunday really hit home. Here are the lyrics that definitely apply to my life right now:

Great is Thy faithfulness, oh God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
to Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

So, on an even more positive note, I received an email this morning from my family coordinator with pictures of our little boy at his bday party :) He was so precious, and has changed since we saw him in Jan. His hair had grown a little more, and he looked like he had put on a little weight! He looked like he enjoyed his balloons, and his cake looked awesome!! I had asked for our facilitators to take some cake and/or presents to him for his bday, but this was the first I had heard about whether they were able to do so. It made my week!!!!

International Adoption Process = Emotional Torture

If you are every considering international adoption, let me tell you that you should be completely prepared for total emotional torture. That's the best way for me to describe my feelings lately. In my brain I know things are going to be unpredictable, so I don't know why I'm surprised when things go wrong.

While I was in Memphis this week, Wes got our letter from USCIS that we had been waiting on. He was excited to call me with good news. However, it didn't turn out that way. Instead of our hoped for Form I-171H, we received a request for more evidence. They asked us to send a home study addendum outlining our monthly income. They proceeded to state that our monthly expenses were listed, but not our monthly income. The most absolutely, horribly, frustrating part of all of this???? Our ANNUAL salaries are listed in the home study, not once, but TWICE!!!!!!!!! Can they not do simple division???? Maybe I should give them my niece's phone number, b/c I'm pretty sure she could do this math for them.

I emailed my social worker, and she said that she gets these kind of stupid requests from the Memphis office pretty often. She'll send them the addendum asap.

I'll never understand why this is so much harder than it should be.