Wednesday, March 31 3:15PM – Bonding Day #6 - Waiting in our room before we go back for our afternoon visit with Kirill. We have had computer problems (this little laptop has been very very sick!) and didn’t post Monday and Tuesday’s blog until about an hour ago. Last night we had quite a pity party between ourselves with our computer down, thus no e-mails, blogs, movies, ect. After John went to sleep I started reading a book I’ve had for years but had never read. It’s called Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Myers. I opened up to the chapter on “The Doubtful and Unbelieving Mind” and found strength in what I read. It talks about us wavering between hope and fear – wow, that sure seems to have us pegged, you think? She writes about Matthew 14 when Peter was walking on the water toward Jesus and made a mistake by spending too much time looking at the storm. Doubt and unbelief pressed down on him and he started to sink. Myers talks about living from faith to faith (instead from faith to doubt to unbelief and back to faith for a while). That’s what we have got to do here – to continue to walk in faith. We’ve had many storms to walk through from the start of this venture, yet God has been faithful to walk with us through each and every one! We must keep our eyes fixed on what God is able to do, which may indeed be to pull off a miracle here, and CHOOSE to walk in faith and enjoy our time with this child, (not in fear that it is all a wasted effort). This quest is doomed to failure unless God be in it, but we know that we serve a pretty mighty God.
We met 3 other American families (from Texas, Virginia, and Ohio) who are all with Children at Heart Adoptoins and have all come in at the same time to adopt babies (6 and 7 mos. Old) from the babyhouse we are at. Our first encounter with them the day before was a bit awkward since their coordinator was working hard to keep us apart. She didn’t realize that I had already e-mailed 2 of them before we left for Kaz (we had connected on a yahoo group). Anyway, we enjoyed having lunch at Café Karagandy with them. They are staying at a hotel very close to our babyhouse (outside of the downtown area where our apartment is). They have only a small frig in their room and one hotel restaurant to eat at so John and I feel fortunate for our living arrangement. (plus their hotel is close to $100/day verses our $30/day.)
Two very good calls last night from Gulnara! Our documents that had to be redone back home, notarized, apostilled in Columbia, and sent to Kate in Colarado to be translated into Russian have arrived in Karaganda and they are perfect! We’ll welcome “perfect” over “problem” any day.
Our computer is working again and we enjoyed watching a cute movie, “Enchanted” last night. After talking with our daughter, Kelly, this a.m., she said there are several comments on our blog. We look forward to reading them when we get to a wifi area later today. Sorry to have been so pitiful in the earlier post but it looks light we may need an army to get this little guy home! Our circumstances have not really changed, but our mindset is much improved. We do covet your prayers. Hang in there with us.
**Kristin, would you e-mail me ( I don’t have your e-mail address with me). Heading back to the babyhouse. Just bought a little race car set to give us some things to do. He enjoyed stringing the styrofome shapes on a necklace this morning (a little dollar store thing I brought with us).
Keep us in your prayers. We may be sunk here, but for now we’re walking on water!