A Disappointing Day

January 15: After Valery went to the court to get copies of the Court Decree, he and I met for breakfast and then headed for Zaporozhe while Tamara rested. It is a long, somewhat boring 2 ½ hour drive from Berdyansk to Zaporozhe (the city which wins the prize for the most correct ways to spell it and still be correct, I have chosen to use the shortest version). The most exciting thing to do along the way is count the number of chickens, geese, and turkeys that you see. On certain stretches, you can also gaze in wonder at how thousands of plastic bags had been strewn along the side of the road and across the beautiful fields (it looked like an entire garbage truck filled with plastic bags exploded and the wind spread them for about a mile in each direction). The main check points on the drive are reaching Takmak which is about the halfway point and then reaching the intersection of the road to Melitopol which means you are only about 50 km away.

After searching for the street and then the address for about 20 minutes, we finally located the birth certificate office. Since we were late, the woman helping us asked us to go on to the passport office and she would prepare the paperwork that we needed. After asking for directions about five times, we finally found the familiar street and building where we had been on both of our other two adoptions (it was interesting that I seemed to know my way around Zaporozhe better than Valery and our driver, but, after all, I had been there several times before). I sat in the taxi as Valery went in to check on the boys’ passport process. After about 30 minutes, Valery returned with some news that I didn’t really want to hear. The man in charge of reissuing the passports had told him that Viktor’s process could take up to 30 DAYS! This was due to the fact that he was already 18 and considered to be an adult (even though he is just a kid and has been living in an orphanage for the past 9 yrs.) so he would have to abide by the normal process that any adult that is immigrating to a foreign country has to follow.

I was still recovering from this news as we drove back to pick up the birth certificate paperwork. When Valery came out of the office, I could tell that something else was wrong because he had a downcast look on his face. When I asked if he had gotten what we needed, he reluctantly told me that the woman had found a couple of errors in the Court Decree document and that we would have to get them corrected and then bring it back to her the next day. This was the second blow in the gut in less than 30 minutes but I had to catch myself and focus on trusting that God knew all about this before we did and that He was able to take care of these obstacles. It was dark as we left Zaporozhe on the way back to Berdyansk and we were hungry and tired so we made one stop at the roadside market to get a few snacks at one of the kiosks. After we got back to the hotel, Tamara and I went down to the cafe and had dinner while I told her about everything that had happened. I was tired so I went to bed and Tamara wrote the blog about our time at home between trips and our return journey.