First some good news. We finally got a small glimmer of hope and received all of the paperwork that we need to submit our final dossier. So we will be mailing the paperwork to AIA along with a check for the first part of our agency fee later today. Yeah! The only thing left to do as far as paperwork is concerned is our medical exams. We had them scheduled for next week but received word from AIA to postpone them for another couple of weeks. The medicals are only good for three months so if we have them too early they might expire before we get our court date in Russia.

On to the rant.... just kidding. It has been a frustrating couple of weeks for Lisa and I. I told myself when we started this process that I was going to be patient, realizing that we were on 'Russia time' when it came to the adoption. I am learning now that it is much easier said than done. For those of you who don't follow the happenings in the Russian adoption community (uh... that's probably most everyone), there was a very unfortunate occurrence in North Carolina 2 weeks ago in which a mother is accused of killing her two-and-a-half year old daughter. The little girl in this case happened to be adopted from Russia. This case has compounded the anti-American sentiment that is present in some sectors of the Russia government. The media in Russia seems to have an anti-American bent to it as well and tends to write inflammatory stories with 'details' that could be true or untrue. So, of course, now there are all sorts of rumors of things like moratoriums, pyschological evaluations before adopting, etc. Meanwhile none of this is helping our agency get any closer to the reaccreditation that they need so we can finish our adoption and bring our son home. We ask all of our friends and family to pray that the Russian officials gain the wisdom and insight to realize that a slow down in the adoption process does not benefit anyone, especially the children waiting to adopted into loving, stable families. We also pray for strength, courage, and patience at a time when it's hard to find any of those things.