Spinning Our Wheels

There is an exasperated sound that I want to make, but I don't know how to type it.

Olga found out yesterday from the Russian consulate that they will accept an invitation, not directly from the court, but processed the old way through Migration services. Only Russian consulates located in Europe are taking direct letter invitations from the judges, not processed by Migration Services due to the latest European -Russian governmental agreement. The US doesn't have that same agreement with Russia, so invitations should only be coming the old way, processed by Migration services. In order to process the invitation, Migration service should have a letter from the Department of Education (this was the old way), but the Department of Education doesn't want to issue these letters. They feel that since the courts issue letters, it is unnecessary for them to do it as well. Also, the court-issued letters don't require any further processing with Migration services and work perfectly for European adopters. So, Andrei has an appointment with the Migration Services on Wednesday, July 30, to ask them to process an invitation using not the letter from the DOE, who doesn't want to issue such letters anymore, but the letter from the judge we already have. If the Migration Services refuse to process the invitation without the letter from the DOE, and if the DOE refuses to issue the letter, then I don't know what is going to happen.

Olga says that hopefully the delay will be a "short" one. Keep in mind that "short" in Russia means a month or less. This means that departing on August 2 is out, and it's possible that even the 9th is out if this can't get figured out. If we leave on the 16th, we'll miss Derek's first day of school and Alex's first day of Kindergarten. Also, the grandparents will have to work harder because they won't be able to just go down to the lake with the boys for the week. Any later than that, and we'll just be irritated that we can't go get Katie. Technically, we were able to take custody of her last Monday...and we can't get to her.

At this point, I don't know what you should pray for except maybe sanity for Steve and me. We know this is all part of God's plan, but this not knowing is driving us crazy! We are so close, and yet we are stuck. The way we understand it is we are "on hold" until Wednesday when we hope to get more information.

These are the Days of our Lives ...