This will be a quick note!! However, I think I've said that before and it ended up being pages long. Anyway.
Most of you know that we are in the process to head back to Russia to add another child to our family. Some of you likely didn't know that. We are!! And we have a very excited little girl right now! She can hardly wait to go to Russia to meet her new little brother (she is convinced it will be a boy, though we have repeatedly told her that it could be a girl). We are actually working on our homestudy right now....just waiting on our fire department to come inspect our house (I have called every week for five weeks now and they still haven't shown up!!), and our letters from the child abuse department stating that we have no record of abusing children. At the same time we are slowly compiling our dossier. It's coming along well, and we had hoped to have it submitted to Russia by the middle of May. Unfortunately, the recent developments in Russia (the mom sending her seven year old back to Russia cause she couldn't handle him) has left us wondering what is going to happen! This morning we found out that all adoptions from Russia to the US have been temporarily suspended. What does this mean for us? We don't know other than that our process is put on hold. The "freeze" will be in effect until the US agrees to sign an adoption agreement with Russia. Russia has tried to get the US to sign it before and they have always refused. The one thing that Russia has always wanted is the right to try American couples in their courts if something like this happens. After all, our children are still Russian citizens, so they feel they need to protect their citizens. We shall see. For now, we will finish up our homestudy, and then we will likely wait to see when our agency tells us to finish our dossier. They are hoping this can all be settled by the end of this month and that adoptions can resume as before.
Please pray for all the families that this will affect. We aren't feeling too bad about it all as we are just in the beginning stages. God is in control and He will bring a child to our family in HIS time. The families that need the prayer right now are those who have referrals and aren't allowed to go visit. Especially pray for the families who have visited their children and are now waiting on their court date. We were so on edge when we were waiting on our court date. We loved our children dearly and could hardly wait to go make them a permanent part of our family. Something like this sends hearts plummeting. Pray that the Russian and US governments can get together on a deal and that the hundreds of thousands of children waiting on families will be united soon.

God's blessings to you all! Enjoy this wonderful spring day!!!!