Still missing the most important part

Today was loaded with activity, but we still didn’t get the most important thing, Nastia! We are pretty disappointed. It turns out that we had to have her birth certificate to get her released from the orphanage. Thanks to the lady at the birth certificate office working on her day off, we got it at 2 o’ clock, but the social worker at the orphanage was gone for the day. So, we will have to wait until tomorrow. All in all, today was insanely productive by anything we have to compare it to in our past adoptions.

We started off at the crack of 10 (nothing seems to get rolling too early around here). The first stop was at the notary. She didn’t come in until 11. When she came in at 11, she announced that she wouldn’t complete our documents without Nastia’s birth certificate although the document she was doing for us had nothing to do with a birth certificate! So, we left and went to another notary. Success! Forty-five minutes later we had our document and we were off. Then we ran by the orphanage for a quick stop to pick up papers and then to the birth certificate office where we waited for 2 hours. Once our 2 pm appointment rolled around, we were in and out in 2 minutes. We jumped back in the car and stopped at 2 more notary offices along the way to try to get official copies of the birth certificates. No good...out to lunch at both places at 2:15 in the afternoon. Then, we made a stop by to get started on a police clearance for her passport. That took 10 minutes. We ran in to get the passport process started while Galya’s husband got the birth certificate copies made (multi-tasking!). (Is anyone getting confused or exhausted reading this? I know I am while I am typing it!!!!). Once that was done, we jumped back in the car and ran back downtown to get Nastia a new tax id number and called her to get on a bus and come meet us at the passport office. We stopped by and paid for the tax id and passport and met her to fill out the passport application and have her passport picture taken. Once that was done, we took her back to the orphanage (the not fun moment of the day) and drove home without her one last time.

We should get her passport Thursday morning. We have checked flights, and the bad news is there is nothing to Kyiv until Friday morning. The good news is there is a flight from here that is the same price as the flight from Simferopol. Yeah! That means an hour and a half less driving and a little later that we can sleep. We have already heard from the US embassy and we have an appointment for a week from today. Our flights are still booked for Feb 2, and that looks good right now unless something crazy happens. We will see, but God has moved every obstacle. The birth certificate thing was big and He moved in a very big way with the lady in the office. Praise the Lord!!!!

Thank you for praying. We are exhausted. Love you all!!!

Blessings,

Rick