Some More Disappointments

I guess God has decided we needed to practice more faith. This week we got some bad news, but not anything we cannot deal with. First of all we were officially informed that we would not be allowed to adopt this little boy in the baby house. It is discouraging but must be the will of God, because the excuse they gave us is not valid because we know of a couple that adopted two sisters in the same orphanage our girls are in, and a baby from the baby house that were not siblings just last month! Oh well, it is not meant to be. We felt that prior anyway.

Secondly, we found out that for whatever reason our court date is not set until August 8th. That is a week later than it should have been. It is discouraging news, and Larry is worried about missing so much work, but what can we do. We are grateful for his assistant back at work who is filling in for him, and everyone else at Princeton. They all have been so supportive. Shannon even rescheduled her own vacation for us, thank you so much!!! He will be working hard to catch up.

I will post some more pictures this weekend. It takes so long to download on this dial up internet! But they are so cute, I want everyone to see them!

Caleb has been having a hard time, and this adoptin process has brought up some feelings in him about adoption. He just wants us to be normal and for all of the children (him included) to have come out of my tummy like everyone else. We were talking about how sometimes Heavenly Father doesn't always works things the way you want, like him being my natural child and coming out of my tummy, but the end result is what counts. That is that we are all together as a family forever! We have to remember this as well. It doesn't matter how long it takes, or how much money it costs, he will make sure the end results happens, and that is we will be together. The girls will come home....eventually. Sometimes I wish he made it a little bit more easier though!

We will be home probably on August 11th. Then I will return the last week of August to come and bring home the girls. I really wanted to stay here, I love it here, but after prayerful consideration we decided that I was needed at home. Larry will be working a lot of late nights to catch up, the boys need to get in school, and they will miss the first week of school and need to catch up. I know the girls will be OK, I know the Lord will bless them and they will be surrounded by angels, but I still cried last night thinking about leaving them. That will be so hard for me. We will leave the girls in the Lord's hands.

We have had some great visits this week with the girls. Today we had our first family prayer. We talked about God and how we pray everyday as a family. We knelt and prayed and Anastacia started giggling a little in the prayer. Boy, did Maria scold her afterwards. I was impressed with her reverance and the importance it was for her. It was a really neat experience to kneel down and pray with these girls, and we had Masha translating for us.

Maria has been singing for us and she loves doing gymnastics for us. She is always going down in the splits! Nastya is just so cute with her dark hair and blue eyes. She is constantly giving us hugs and kisses, and today even Nathanael let her hug him! Small bits of progress are great!!!!!

They also wore their new clothes today and were so proud of them. But I realized that I had mistaken on their sizes. Maria is bigger than I thought!!! She is actually a size 8 and maybe could wear 9, and Anastacia is a size 7 going on 8. I was able to take back their clothes today which I am grateful for because they don't do returns here in Petropavlovsk. But I had been that store many times, and bought clothes for the girls and the boys. They thought I was a good customer so they exchanged for me.

We love being here in Petropavlovsk. The weather is really strange as it will be hot, then cold, then sunny and then rainy all within an hour! I am very excited because right now they are installing a little hot water heater for our shower!!!! I guess they got tired of us always complaining about taking cold showers. They told us the hot water would not be turned on again in our apartment until August 1st! They are good to appease us spoiled Americans.

I will post some more pictures this weekend. It takes so long and it is cheaper on the weekend. We have been getting some great pictures, I wish I could show them all to you!!!!!