Progress

Let’s review some of the final elements on our list:

Thursday Evan and I went to the doctor to have physicals for our medical paperwork (that Russia likes renewed every 3 months!). We’re both healthy and good to go. I also talked to my doctor about something that happened during our Russian medicals last September. The Russian doctor had listened to my heart and declared after 30 seconds of listening that I had a valve problem. This was news to me. A normal thinking person would have shrugged it off and not thought of it again. Well, it has bothered me for months. But, my American doctor took extra care to listen to my heart and heard nothing abnormal. Let’s see what the Russian doctor says this time.

Also, Thursday brought us a special delivery. For those of you who remember our last trip, our passports with our visas arrived the day before we left. In fact, the Fedex tracking system had said they were supposed to come the day of departure, but they miraculously came early. Well, this time is different. We already have them in our possession! It is a great feeling to know that something that important is already taken care of.

We also learned a valuable lesson. Just because the majority of the unknown name/unknown numbers or odd phone numbers that appear on caller ID are telemarketers, does not mean that ALL of them are. Lately we have been so frustrated that we pick up the phone and hang it up right away. Well, Thursday morning we did that to the Cleveland CIS office. Oops. Thankfully, they were persistent and called a THIRD time and Evan answered it. They were just informing us that they were mailing out our I-171H!!! Another huge praise!

And, I told you about our mortgage company letter. I managed to get a hold of a manager on the phone. She understood our situation and promised to have our documents sent out right away. I asked her where she was because I wanted to know the origin of these documents for apostille purposes. She said, “I’m in India, but your documents are coming from Maryland.” Even she chuckled when she said it. I knew a lot of jobs were outsourced there, but no one has ever told me personally that is where they were.

So, we were promised two notarized letters sent overnight. I had faxed them the letter showing exactly how it needed to be so there were no issues. Well, we have issues! First, the letters were not sent overnight. Second, what was sent to us was not a letter. We received one copy of our mortgage note. That is not what I requested and that is not what I was promised. So, I’m a little ticked off at our mortgage company. Right now, Evan and I are trying to do some creative thinking on how to handle it. We have a call into Leslie to see what she thinks.

Other than that issue, 85% of our documents are complete. We have a few to get apostilled on Wednesday or Thursday. We are just waiting on our addendum and picture pages cover letter from our home study agency. She is supposed to send it out no later than tomorrow. Today I started making meals to freeze and working on packing. Hopefully, we are underweight this time!

God is really teaching me a lot right now. Memories of our court experience still haunt me and rob me of my peace. I really am trying to get the knowledge that God is personally going before us from my head into my heart. He is not surprised by my unemployment. He was not shocked that our mortgage company did not give us the correct document with less than a week left. I need to rest in the fact that God is in control.

It’s really easy to forget to stop and pray when we are this busy. I am making a point of bringing every care, concern, and praise to Him. And, praising Him needs to be important. Look at how much He has taken care of this far. When we heard that we had to make a third trip we instantly worried about the finances. But, it has been handled. We worried about our I-171H, but with one polite phone call, Cleveland’s CIS expedited it for us. Nicholas is healthy and well taken care of at the baby home. That is definitely a huge praise.

A final praise is that next week at this time, we will be boarding the plane to Tomsk. We will be four short hours away from being in the same city as our son. How exciting! We can hardly wait.

Kristin