Brent and I have completed everything that is necessary for us to do at this point in the adoption process. All the paperwork on our end has been complete. Right now, we are waiting for 2 important things to happen before all our paperwork can be sent to Russia: We need to hear back from the United States about an appointment to get FBI fingerprinting done and we need to receive official permission from them to adopt overseas. We also need to mail a large stack of papers that I have (25 different documents, some multiple pages in length) to Austin to be apostilled, which basically means that the notarization of each of these forms is verified by the state of Texas. Once all of this is done, our documents will be ready for our adoption agency to prepare to send to Russia.
Which brings me to the issue of patience. I received a large envelope in the mail yesterday with 13 documents from the homestudy agency. I was planning to run to the post office to mail these to Austin to get apostilled only to find 3 blatant typos in the forms! This is the 4th time something similar has happened with our homestudy agency (in particular, it is apparently very difficult to spell my name correctly...) Basically, this is going to mean a delay of a week while we wait for new forms to be created, notarized, and mailed to us. Amazingly enough, I am not as frustrated by this as I would expect myself to be.
Back in school, I used to hate group projects. I preferred to do everything myself... definitely an issue with control on my part. Over the years, life (and God) has taught me that I can't always do it on my own. God has been shaping, molding, and humbling me to see I need others, and sometimes the very person I need may not do things the way I want them to. The process of adoption is requiring us to depend on a lot of other people: multiple people in government offices in both the US and Russia, multiple workers at our homestudy agency, multiple workers at our adoption agency, friend and family for support, and most of all God. I have to remember that God's timing is perfect, and I want to allow Him to use this entire process as an opportunity to depend on Him on a deeper level as we continue to depend on others to bring our child to our home.
