Week 12 - So many blessings!

God is blessing us in every direction. He is giving us the strength we need to complete this journey and bring our little boy home.

Blessing #1! We found out that we do NOT have to leave Siberia while we wait for Paul Daniel! This will be a tremendous blessing for us since this means we will get a few visits with Paul Daniel before we are allowed to pick him up from the orphanage. We are only promised 3 visits - of course we are earnestly praying for more.

Blessing #2! Paul Daniel's surgeon is sending us the bottles and nipples we need for not only our trip for Siberia, but to feed Paul until his surgery in November!

Blessing #3! We found out last week that we need a psychological evaluation from a Texas-certified psychologist before our trip and that the letter from the psychologist must be apostilled in AUSTIN and returned to us before we board the plane on Saturday! We spent a day and a half calling psychologists all over the DFW area. EVERY SINGLE ONE WE CALLED was either booked solid for two weeks to a month or had a waiting list!! We finally decided to send an email to our Christian brothers and sisters for some help and long story short, we got our 5-hour psychologist evaluation completed on Friday afternoon. Dr. Erick Gonzalez cleared his appts for the day so he could see us and he worked into the evening on Friday to complete our letter.

Blessing #4! When Carl and I made our first trip to the orphanage in June, we asked the orphanage director what supplies we could bring to him from the U.S. on our return trip. He only asked for thermometers. So Carl and I decided to go with the ear thermometers and some fancy rectal thermometers. The problem was - the instructions were not in Russian and there are no English-speaking workers in Danil's orphanage. SO, I called the thermometer company - they couldn't help. I made contact with two ladies on the internet who both said at first they would do it. After seeing the instructions - both ladies declined. I had decided my next attempt would be to contact someone from the Russian Dept at SMU and had begun formulating a plan on how to approach them with this request. BUT THEN, last Saturday Carl and I decided we would spend the morning working in the front yard flowerbeds. About 3 hours into it, 2 ladies walked by. I looked at Carl and said "were those ladies speaking RUSSIAN???" He said, "I think so." I couldn't believe it! So I took off running after them... "Excuse me! Excuse me!" I told them our problem and would you believe it, they were willing to do it!!! Alexandra and her mother translated 13 pages of thermometer instructions into Russian for us - charts and all. It turns out that Alexandra does not live in our neighborhood. She was just passing down our street to get to her neighborhood after a trip to the store. Her mother is in town visiting from Russia. Alexandra told me that literally MINUTES before she passed our house, her mother was saying that she was wishing there was some type of charity work she could do - she says she feels so useless on her visits to the U.S. and wished she could find something good to do with her time!! God is good.

Carl and I are working every day to check things off our list. I have all Paul Daniel's clothes laid out. Wish I knew his sizes now, but the agency has not been successful in getting that for us. So all I can do is take multiple sizes. The main thing I wish I knew was his shoe size, but oh well. I have him a little hat and a little coat. I'm carefully reviewing each toy and book to decide which would best for our week in Moscow and on the flight home. Everything is going just fine. If we can just keep up our energy...