Russian President Medvedev weighs in

ABC's George Stephanopoulos was in Moscow to interview Russian President Dmitri Medvedev about the upcoming arms treaty.  This morning in the interview the topic of the adopted Russian boy came up.   Nothing definite here, but it sounds like the Russian government may not immediately close things down just yet.  He's clearly ticked off about what happened, but seems like he doesn't want to do anything harsh yet like closing all US adoption down.

What now?

The Russian foreign minister is calling for an immediate freeze of all US adoptions because of this sad episode. I can only imagine how upset many Russians will feel about it.

No idea yet what will come of this and how it will affect our plans.  Crucially, God does know; and he will be faithful to love us and do us good, regardless of the outcome.

Even so, it will be a long weekend.  Pray for us, and for the girls we still hope soon to meet.

We have a referral, and are heading to Russia soon!

After many months, we have received a referral from Russia to go and meet two little girls who need a family. Lots of waiting for a long time while we moved into a new home and prepared for being parents, and suddenly things are moving very, very fast!

The girls are ages four and a half and one and a half. They are at an orphanage near Krasnoyarsk, a large city in central Siberia. (As it happens, this is not very far from Irkutsk, where Linda and I spent several months way back in 1992-1993.) They have been there for nine months. We are not at liberty yet to say much more about the girls publicly until the adoption is finalized.

We are preparing to travel to Russia at the end of next week to meet them, and there's a lot of paperwork to do before we leave. Our trip will only last for seven days, of which we will get to spend about two or three days with the girls at the orphanage. We'll post what we can during our trip, depending on internet access and what the orphanage allows us to photograph/video.

We will not be bringing the girls back with us on this trip. After meeting them, we return home; and assuming all goes well, we would return to Russia two or three months from now to take custody of the girls and appear in a Russian court to formalize the adoption. After a mandatory ten-day waiting period during which we would have to stay in Russia, we would then bring them home with us after visiting the US Embassy in Moscow.

Excitement, nerves, worries about many things...and we have a lot to do in the short time remaining before our trip. Pray for us as we prepare to meet these little ones.

Relocation

Tomorrow, with the help of many friends and family, we are packing our belongings into a storage container and preparing to leave the house we've called home for over 12 years. Our hope and plan is to be moving into a larger home in Richfield that will have more space for children than our original house did.

We will miss the old house and the neighborhood, but we are glad for the chance to get a home that's better for kids: right across the street from a park, lots of play space, plenty of bedrooms and bathrooms. We are thankful for our old home, thankful for the new one, and most thankful of all for those around us who have been so helpful and generous with their time through the many hours of house-selling preparation and process. We can't wait to get re-located and have you all over once we're moved in.

Declining.

The finality of getting a letter notarized and apostilled had us a bit shook, I suppose. We had been asked to give our decision to decline the referral in writing and all officially done.

Signing our names to such a document, listing the names and dates of birth of the children you are officially saying "no" to, was heartbreaking. And so we began to wonder if we were really doing the right thing, and asked our caseworker if we might change our minds before the letter arrived.

After getting permission to rethink the matter over the weekend, it allowed us to reflect again on the reasons for our decision, and to talk and pray with friends in our small group. Last night talked for a while, and did some writing and thinking about the implications of accepting the referral now, when we would have so much to prepare and so little time in which to do it. The original reasons for our declining, and others, landed on us again and we realized this morning that this is really the best option for us right now. We have much to get done in anticipation of adopting kids, and we really need to get it done so that when we accept a referral, we can really turn our full attention where it needs to be: the kids. Moving forward now with this referral would mean we would be unable to do that, and so we're going to decline it, as hard as it is.

Thanks for your encouragement and advice. We are very grateful for you all.

Reconsidering...

After preparing our formal paperwork to formally turn down the referral, both of us were wavering, and not feeling especially settled over the issue. I went ahead and called our caseworker and explained the situation, and asked if changing our answer was even possible at this point. This morning we learned that the answer is yes, and that we would be granted the weekend to decide whether or not to travel to Russia to meet the kids. We were also told that if we made the trip to meet them, we would not in any way be obligated to move forward with adopting them if we so choose.

So we took up the agency's offer for more time to reconsider, and will revisit our decision this weekend. I had thoughts this morning about the parable of the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep, to find the one that was lost. This is the hardest decision I've ever had to make. Lord help us.

Disappointment

Hi everyone, it's Andy. Thank you all very much for your advice and for listening to us, for wanting to know how things have been progressing, and for praying for us since our last post. After three weeks, we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we should finally decline our referral, and it's very hard.

We spent our time getting as educated as we could about FASD and talking to people who have adopted children with this diagnosis, as well as going over our current house situation. The conclusion we arrived at was that we should decline the referral, and then use this time to finish getting our living situation squared away, and probably revise our dossier to state that we are interested in two children rather than two or three.

We are very disappointed, but think this is the right move for us, for a number of interlocking reasons; none of them were conclusive by themselves but taken together the collective weight of the whole led us to make this difficult choice.



1. Adopting three kids at one time, especially with one or more older children, is very difficult. This was the counsel we got from just about everyone we talked to. It's not impossible, but with additional difficulties it would have been very hard on our marriage.


2. While there wasn't conclusive proof of FASD for any one of the kids, their risk factors were so high that we would very likely have had to deal with at least one, maybe two, and perhaps all three kids having it to some extent. Raising children with this condition is very challenging, and although it can be done its a very different parenting experience than for children without it.


3. If we were to accept this referral it would have been extremely unlikely that we could have gotten our house sold and a new one purchased and prepared before taking custody of the children. This would have been quite stressful for us and would have made it just that much harder to help ourselves and the kids adjust to our new life together as a family. Our current house just doesn't have the space for what three kids and ourselves would need, and moving forward now would really put us into a time-critical situation.


So, now we go back into the queue and wait for the next referral, and trying to use our time wisely in preparing as much as we can. We are so grateful for all of you, and for the remarkable amount of information and moral support there is around Minneapolis for adoptive families in situations like ours. Everyone has been wonderful, and we take a good deal of comfort from knowing that so many people want to help us succeed in our desire to adopt. We continue to need your prayers and support as we move on from this referral, and starting waiting hopefully for the next one.