Stumbling Blocks

Yesterday involved chasing paperwork ad nauseum! And the end result was that we still did not end up with the new birth certificate. All day long there were stumbling blocks all along the way: a two and a half hour wait for the court decree, one error on that decree that caused the first birth certificate to send us back to the judge for a correction, another long wait, visit to the other Kiev district for the other part of the birth certificate to be approved, a trip to something like their regional office for approval of what the district had placed their seal on, and on and on. With much "encouragement" from Alla at least the required forms and seals were getting done by the various offices, until, you guessed it, the last stop. We were back at the original birth certificate office and the lady was just plain mean; I could tell she was yelling at Alla and I cannot even understand the language. Believe me, few people ever yell at Alla, but because she wanted something from that yelling person, Alla kept her cool pretty well. Still, in the end, we did not get the new birth certificate which means we did not yet get to pick up Maxim which also means we couldn't apply for his passport which means we couldn't apply for his new i.d. number. Without all these things, we cannot apply for his visa to come to the U.S. We are hoping it doesn't delay our return home by too much. You may be wondering when will we get this birth certificate? Well, one would think that could happen today, but no, the lady said she had meetings and would be out of the office today and so we can go back and try on Thursday. No way to know if we'll be successful. No one can ever predict when anything will happen over here. John and I (as well as Alla) are both utterly exhausted from all this frantic pace to try to get things accomplished as well as mentally fatigued from trying to figure it all out. So keep those prayers coming our way, please.