More photos have been posted under "the past few days" in our photo link.
Quite honestly, this has been an awlful week! We have been waiting on the passports since last Friday when we applied for them. Without the passports, we cannot proceed to the next three phases (visa appointment at the US embassy, medical exams, buying airline tickets). The saving grace has been seeing Jesus everytime I look at my children's faces.
The bad news came today at 1pm. It seems that the passport office either lost or erased the passport photo of Kolya. The sweet part is that they didn't feel the need to tell anyone until the day we were to pick up the passports! And we couldn't ask them how things were going for the past three days while we sat around waiting for them to tell us that they lost the photo! How nice! The kicker is that the girls' passport are ready and we could start the above mentioned three processes and get one of us and the girls out of here, but, they will not release those to us without all siblings' passports. I guess they think that we will leave one of the kids behind! Get real! Also, they have the audacity to insist on the expediting fee of $300 per child for "helping us" get passports sooner!
So what does all this mean??!! We WILL NOT BE COMING HOME THIS WEEKEND! Yes, that's me shouting! There is no way to get the passports in time before the embassy closes at noon on Friday. In fact, if we don't get the passports, medical exams, and visas done by Tuesday night, December 23rd, we will be stuck in Ukraine until January 13th! The embassy will be closed for the holidays except for emergency situations. Guess what, adoption is not an emergency situation! That gives us three more working days and the passport office doesn't care, it's not their problem!
If we do get everything done by next Tuesday night, we then battle for space on already packed and booked holiday flights. We may have to spilt the group with me taking one or two and Heidi taking the rest. Suddenly, flying the opposite direction to go in the right direction doesn't seem so pressing! Next week, I run out of paid vacation and leave time. Heidi is ok with work until the first week of January, but I may have to invoke the Family Medical Leave Act for work and go unpaid. I cannot and will not leave her here by herself!
I'm angry, i'm upset and I had to watch my dear wife lose it and cry in front of our petrified children, today. She is losing weight because she doesn't like the food and she works so hard to feed our children. We both are struggling and I've been whining, but I had no idea how hard Heidi has been taking things until today. She is a tough, strong person and all who know her do know this. She and I aren't homesick or wanting home for ourselves, it's our children that we need to get home. They and we, need more than two changes of clothes. The kids need to be seen by doctors and dentists. Little Julia has been getting nosebleeds since coming home from the sanitorium and we don't know why. We have started pumping vitamins to each of them twice daily and we have seen a significant change in their physical appearance since they have been eating like kids should. We need to get home! We have children now that we are happy to provide for, but it is an enormous challenge with an uncooperative broken system.
So it is with heavy hearts that we ask all of you, everyone, to get on your knees and pray us home, please! His will be done.
~ Felix ~
