Keeping our Chins up

It has been a really long time again since I have posted. Lots has happened in our world too. We have been on a real roller coaster, forgot that was how this whole adoption thing goes. We finally gave the agency an ulitmatium with needing a referral by the end of June. It seemed to help as it got them working a bit harder and explaining themselves better. We finally received a photo of our referral about 3 weeks ago now, but we didn't get a medical file. The referral isn't considered official until both the photo and the medical file are in the prospective parent's hands. The one person authorized to release the medical file had to take emergency family leave for "a week" that conveniently turned into two and a half weeks. She got back today. Since her absence lots has happened. There was a couple a head of us that had gotten their referral and med file so theirs was official and they got travel dates. They are probably about to come home, however while there they declined their referral and asked if there was another little boy available...our unofficial referral went to them instead. No one seems able to explain to me how they could get the medical file released to them when we couldn't with this lady absent. I guess the Minister of Education can go over her head and we are of no consequence. The agency called yesterday with the news and well I was LESS than KIND in my reaction to their news. We had been soooo very much planning on that little boy. Dumb on our part in many ways, but we really didn't think there was any way we could lose him, we more thought that the only way it wouldn't work was if we saw something wrong when we were there, we never thought we would never actually get to meet him. We were given two choices, we could take the referral they refused and travel taking the chance that maybe they would give us another choice when we were there if we found that we tooo had to refuse him, or we can wait. I took the referral to get the med file and after consulting with our pediatrician, we also have to refuse this child. There are too many things in his medical file that indicate that he is a huge health risk. We can't list the details here, but suffice it to say that I have two pages in my notebook of reasons why he isn't what we are looking for. Our paperwork says "mild correctable conditions", he doesn't have correctable conditions at all let alone mild. So we are back to whatever square we have occupied for a very long time. The only upside is that we are now number 1 on the list in two regions and I have no idea where we are on the list in the third region. Its a long way from thinking we were heading to Russia in two or three weeks to the waiting list again. Our paperwork will begin to expire the end of August, so we have a little time yet. All we can do now is pray and it recognize again in much greater detail that we aren't in control, God really does know best. I sure hope my patience will last till his plan becomes more evident. We will head for convention in the morning, I have never been more aware of how much I need it as I am this year. I will let this do for now and will post more when we know more, but for now, prayers are what we need more than anything else. Its a huge comfort to know we have many on our side.