A Special Visit

Dimitri with the orphanage Doctor, John and his wife Julie, being held by David and next to his caretaker

Dimitri checking out John

A ray of sunshine. Dimitri truly is being watched over and taken care of as you all keep telling me. I posted a note to the Yahoo group of people adopting from Kyrgyzstan to see if anyone was going over soon and could bring Dimirti more vitamins. Two days later John (a missionary from canada doing some work over there in a different region called Tokmok) and friends were there at the orphanage with vitamins in hand. Could you ask for anything more? (Maybe just to get him home). It is nice to see Dimitri with people, being held and outside!

John is an amazing person and has been such a support to all the families adopting from Kyrgyztan. You can get a glimpse of his work by viewing his blog at http://www.actofkindness.blogspot.com/ He will be in Kyrgyzstan for 6 months this time with his wife and two teen age daughters. We hope to get back there to meet him in person before he goes back to Canada in August.

Dimitri News

We got some new photos of Dimitri. We also got an updated report of measurements. It just made my heart sink to see his skinny little legs hanging down and to learn he is falling farther off the growth charts and he is still not sitting up. It is just so frustrating to be ready to give it all and not be able to do it. His three month supply of vitamins has run out so we will send some more. I am going to check to see if we could pay to have someone come and spend some one on one time with him. That is all I can think to do.

Update

So here is what we know.......................NOTHING.

"Next Week"

Well we have been waiting all week for news. Our in country coordinator was suppose to meet with the Minister of Education this week. She was going to request that an exception be made to the signing off process for those families that have been waiting for court dates. I have not heard officially but from what I again can gather, the meeting was cut short because the MOE got called away. I guess the meeting has been rescheduled for "next week".
We will keep praying for God's guidance and peace in the process.

The Roller Coaster

The adoption agency called last weekend to let us know of "good new/bad news". The bad news was we did not get a court date yet, she said "two more weeks". The good news was our case has been through the committees and they have waived our 30 day waiting period! So, that means once we have our court date we can travel right away! The reputation of good adoption "juju" on memorial day weekend continues.We were beyond excited!!! And a bit panicked!!! That means we would only have a weeks notice before travel. Yikes. But I am sure we can do whatever we need, as quickly as we need, to get Dimitri home as soon as possible. As rapidly as our excitement rose, it came down. When I called the agency back to clarify what "two weeks" meant did it mean within two weeks? in exactly two weeks? or after two weeks? She replied "in Kyrgyzstan all those things mean the same thing", so in reality it is all just words and we don't know anything at all about when we may have a court date. When people said adoption is like a roller coaster ride, I was not sure what they meant. I sure do now!


I have become somewhat obsessed with reading yahoo posts and other peoples blogs to try and gather information about what may be happening with the adoption process in Kyrgyzstan. This weekend I became aware of more disheartening news. From what I gather there are two committees which read through all your papers (dossier) and give approval. Our case has been through these committees. Then I have learned that there is one final head person who has to sign off on a dossier before it can be submitted to court for final approval, before you can bring your child home. At this point the person who is in this position is only acting until a permanent candidate can be appointed by the Minister of Education. I have gathered that this acting person was just about to sign off on all of the waiting dossiers when someone informed this him/her that they actually do not have the authority to do this. The signing off can only be done by the official appointed person. So I the roller coaster is at a stand still until the Minister of Education appoints an official person to this position. Which I guess could take months. Prayers, Prayers, Prayers!!!! What else can we do?