Miracles

hello i Dima and my sister Dasha from St.Petersburg

You can probably tell from the message above (and the fact that Dima is with us at midnight) that today was amazing!!! It started out bright and early with medical appointments. We saw our 8 doc's and found out we are healthy, not even any major psychological problems! They even had coffee, tea and cookies for us, which they kept insisting we go back to between doctors. So that was the easy part.

Then we went to Dima's orphanage to meet with a government representative from the municipality that had opposed our adoption and Dima's orphanage director, who had adamantly opposed us after looking at our paperwork and had told Natasha she would not change her mind. Dima and his social worker were also in on the meetings. Unbeknownst to any of us, the director had visited with Dima yesterday, asked him some questions, then Dima was awake most of the night nervous about today because he knew there were problems.

All we can say is that Natasha had done her homework (painful as it was) to even get us to this point, and God honored and answered all of our prayers! They asked us some questions, much less about Bob's past than we had expected, but much more about our household income, which was completely unexpected until we got here. But at least it was a little easier to defend that issue by explaining Bob's new business and start-up costs. God had definitely gone before us and prepared the way. His Spirit gave us the words to say and the right attitude, and it was awesome to see Him work.

By the end of it, both the municipality and the director stated that they understood there were some mistakes in the paperwork and that they would change their conclusions from negative to positive!!!

We were all SOOO relieved, not just Bob and I, but Natasha, Dima's social worker, and Dima himself. So we took Dima and headed out to Dasha's summer camp (camp is where Russian orphans spend every summer, for a change of scenery but also so that orphanage repairs can be made - it's not camp in the sense that you and I know it.) We picked her up - did I mention that seeing the kids again was amazing??? I should have.

We brought them back to the hotel after making a brief stop at the Bay of Finland - it was so beautiful! I wish you Texans could have been here to feel that cool air and cooler water!

And here we are! It's midnight - shame on us for keeping the kids up this late - but it's not dark outside! We're about to go to bed anyway. Those up here who wait for dark don't sleep this time of year.

Our court appointment is at 2pm tomorrow, so we are free until 1pm and will sleep in, I'm sure. We honestly feel like our court battle was won today since now there is no one left to oppose us! Never thought court would be anti-climactic, but believe me, we're FINE with that!!!

We know that God has honored our prayers and yours once again. Now we need to pray these kids to sleep. We will have official word tomorrow!

Love,
Karen and Dima (and Bob - and Dasha, because Bob doesn't want to leave her out)