First Time Together

Today had a discouraging start when we traveled half an hour by taxi to see the girl at a scheduled time only to find out that she was not in fact available. It was frustrating because two of our three visits with her had been cut very short. We explicitly submitted the situation to God and made the best of it by going to play with the boy before lunch instead of before supper. It ended up being our best time together so far, both fun and relational.

We went back to visit him again at our usual time and the first thing he told us (through the window) was that she was here. They normally are in the same institution seeing each other all the time, although they have been in two different places since before we arrived and haven't had the chance to talk about us. However, our facilitator was able to bring her out to join us while we were playing a game with her brother. I happened by chance to know enough Russian to announce, "Here we are together now for the first time!" and our facilitator took a lovely picture of the four of us, with the girl happily sitting in Julie's lap and the boy between us. Another highlight of the day was finding out that she had asked our facilitator when she saw him where Mama was.

Tomorrow will be an extremely important day as we go to the social worker's office to ask her to start doing the paperwork. We don't take any step for granted. It is somewhat overwhelming to hear how many documents and offices are involved even before the court hearing, but we'll take it one day at a time and are praising God for his clear answers to prayer so far. Unless he does the building, our own efforts are in vain. (I noticed for the first time this week how well that familiar verse sets up the second half of Psalm 127, which is about the Lord blessing people with children.)