And the beat goes on, and on, and on

A quick update for all you blog followers:

From the files shown us today at our final SDA appointment, we have narrowed it down to three boys who we are to think about over night. (The girls that were available in our age range had too many medical issues.) As well, Alla will try to make phone calls to obtain more information about each of them before we have to make the decision as to which one to try to visit.

As you might expect, there is a problem with each potential adoption:

Boy 1 visits an Italian family so we don't know if that is truly just a visit or if he would want to be adopted by others. Alla has no contacts at his orphanage so she doesn't know how the director feels about adoption.

Boy 2 is visited in the orphanage by an aunt who also occasionally takes him to her home for school holidays, so would the child want to leave that behind? But she has never tried to adopt him. The office of his orphanage was closed also by the time we finished our appointment.

Boy 3 wants to be adopted but is an orphanage where the director is kind of like Hitler. She could stand in the way of a child being adopted from this orphanage. She also could be accepting of it. No one knows for sure, though the SDA said she's hard to work with. She also could not be contacted this evening.

Are you beginning to think orphanage directors have all the power? I think you might be right!!!

We are discussing all this and praying about it all as well as waiting until in the morning when hopefully Alla will have more details for us before we have to make the decision on which one to pursue. The problem is we have to make our decision and inform the SDA rather early so that gives Alla little time to obtain info from offices that sometimes don't even open until 9.

I feel like we're on "Let's Make a Deal" and we have to choose between Curtain number 1, Curtain number 2 and Curtain number 3. That or that we should roll the dice!

But, no, we will come to a decision somehow by tomorrow morning at 9:30; we pray for divine guidance as we make this enormous choice. Please pray with us.

Feeling like we're mired down in the trenches,

Charlene & John