Take a deep breath...and move on...

Just wanted to bring everyone up to date about what is going on with the adoption. After many prayers, emails with lots and lots of very helpful people (some of whom are new friends—isn’t that just like God, bringing blessings out of a crazy sad situation?), phone calls to various adoption agencies and more prayers, we are moving on. Thank all of you so very, very much for your prayers and good wishes—we KNOW they have carried us through this whole situation.

We have applied and been accepted to a new agency, CSS, and we are very happy with this decision. This agency has a great reputation, they are small, and they are honestly head and shoulders above our old agency in terms of information they are able to give us just over the phone in two conversations. They also have some significant experience in working with people who have left our agency. We have learned in this process that, like everything else, there are some good agencies out there, there are some not so good ones, and there are agencies that were good in the past but are having serious problems now. When you’re dealing with Russia, like my friend Mike says, it is almost always about “who” you know, and whether or not they know you and trust you. We feel like we have that now where we didn’t with our old agency. I’m not going to use this space to bash our old agency here, and, quite frankly, I’m ready to let all of that negative energy just go now so that we can move forward positively. If any of you have questions, though, about this process, I am glad to answer them.

We do have to redo our paperwork, but not all of it (thank you, God!) Our social worker can update our original homestudy, and we already have our immigration approval, so it is just a matter of getting things redone and up to speed. We will have to redo our fingerprints, but we would have had to do that anyway as much of our original paperwork is now coming up on being nearly a year old. I’m focused on being much more active and proactive this time, on keeping better track of things, and on being in better contact with people who have been through this process recently.

So---we have hope, which is a very good thing. On a similar note, my Drury class is going really well. Only 11 students (compared with like 130 last semester at MSU and in my online class), and it’s Russian History! On top of that, they’re non-traditional students—they actually read the books, they come with questions, they have good topics for the research paper—what more can I ask for here. The only real problem now is that I feel like I should be doing more, since I do have a bunch of time where I’m not all that busy. With more expenses down the road, I’m seriously considering a part-time job doing something—not teaching, perhaps, but I’m open at this point. Please keep me in your prayers about wisdom in making a decision here.

One sad note—our male kitty, Asher, is very sick. We’ve been treating his a sore in his mouth with antibiotics for about 2 weeks, but a trip to the vet yesterday revealed ours and our vet’s worst fears—he has cancer. It’s not going to get any better, and so we’re sadly telling him goodbye.

Again, thank you all for all of your prayers and support---I’m looking forward to October being a much better month than September was!!

Much love