The Journey - Part 4

(If you are new to our story, please click here for part one.)

We worked diligently over the next two months to get our paperwork ready to send to Russia. We found a local agency to do our home study and quickly started all the interviews, gathered reference letters and all of the other required official documents and took our pre-adoption training classes. Things were going along pretty well and the excitement and nervousness were building as we anticipated meeting Nadia sometime around the beginning of April.

It was somewhere around the end of January while attending Sunday service at our church we were singing a worship song and the following words struck deep in my heart:

"Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, Blessed be your name"

As hard as I tried to sing along, every time I got to the "You give and take away" the words would catch and I had to blink back tears.

I knew something was coming, and I knew that I had to prepare my heart to praise God even in whatever was to come. I prayed that it not be Nadia... Please God not her, please don't take her!!!

But still... His will - not mine.

Valentines Day, 2005

I receive this email:

"Dear Dawn and Patrick,

I wish I could give you some encouragement but this morning we received the following news.

While one of our families was visiting their child on the first trip, our representative took the video of the children who have been signed for the other families. When our representative was going to take a video of Nadya we received the following news. A Russian local family arrived in the orphanage and this family saw Nadya among the other children. The family arrived with the officer from the department of education and the director was obliged to show all the girls from 1 to 3.It was the 25 the of January.

We did not know for sure if the local family chose Nadya and we were hoping that it would be some other girl.

Sometimes local families are uncertain and change their decisions. Our representative was checking with the department all these days on the decision this local family made and we did not have any news until this Monday. The local family started the adoption process of Nadya and it means Nadya is no longer available for the adoption.

I was asking why it happened and my representative said the following.

The Russian parliament has passed an amendment to the adoption law in Russia that revokes all the financial and living standards restrictions for Russian adoptive families. It was done to motivate Russian families to adopt orphans.

What options we have now.

1. You are almost paper ready. You can go to Irkutsk any ways and choose a girl for yourself .We are not able to take pictures of all the children who are available.

We have a video of a little girl Lena T. Here is her picture ... -
Please look at her.

2. You can go to Omsk region where all the process takes about two months after you have arrived for the first trip. However this is the region where families are represented by the accredited agencies so the adoption in that region is currently " on hold".

3. You can go to Ukraine where you will be able to adopt a girl starting with the age of 18 months.It can be done within one trip which will last about three weeks total with the interview at the Embassy.After the Dossier is submitted there will be about two months and a family can travel.We have a family who adopted from Ukraine and there is another family who are going to Ukraine soon. You can talk to them and find out about their experiences.

We are waiting for the session of the Russian parliament which will start in April. The members of the Parliament will be debating which of the three ministries ( Ministry of education, Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Justice will be responsible for the International adoptions).

Please call me at your earliest convenience to discuss the situation.

Valerie"

The first time reading it through I am in shock, the second time through I am in tears and I am angry! She is telling me this in an email AND they went to look at her in January??? Why didn't they tell us sooner, but at the very least why didn't they call us to tell us over the phone instead of delivering this news in an email??? AND then to send another picture in the same email - like saying "Oh you can't have her, but how about his one?" I am heartbroken and nauseous and I think I might throw up. I print out the email and go downstairs because it is almost time for my husband to get home for our Valentine's dinner.

He knows something is wrong immediately as he pulls in the garage and sees me standing in the doorway clutching the printed email, tears streaming down my face and my five year old dancing around me wanting to know why mommy is crying!

To be continued...