Not in Nottingham

In Disney's Robin Hood movie, there is a lowpoint where things are going bad, and the chicken minstrel sings a song called, Not in Nottingham. The chorus goes,

Sometimes ups, outnumber the downs,
But not in Nottingham.

This phrase is on my mind constantly the last couple of days.



We had good news on Christmas Day. Our facilitator told us that all of the documents we needed had been sent up to the SDA in Kiev for final approval for a court date. She had gone to the courthouse and reserved a date for either Mon. or Tue. of next week. So we were excited about being able to wrap things up for awhile here and come home. Nancy and Mark would stay home while I would come back after the holidays to finish the adoptions and bring the kids home.

But not in Nottingham.

We found out yesterday that the SDA has rejected our papers on technicalities. Under different circumstances that would not really be a problem. In fact, our facilitator has already received corrected documents from both orphanages, and the updated documents will be in Kiev tonight. The problem is, we will very likely not have approval from the SDA before they shut down for the New Year's and Christmas holidays. This means that we will not be able to have court until the 3rd week of January. There is a mandatory 10-day waiting period before the kids can be removed from the orphanages. Valya has some properties issues to deal with. There is a period where we have to get birth certificates and domestic passports. We can't do any of that without court. Another problem is that now Nancy will have to return to Ukraine also because she is required to be present at court. All because of some wording issues on the documents. The SDA is very capricious. The facilitators never know what they will complain about.

There is still room for a miracle, however. The documents will be submitted to the SDA on Monday. If they approve same-day, we might be able to get court on Tuesday. That is very unlikely, but not impossible.

Nancy and Mark both have colds, I've had stomach flu. We have been gone from home 5 weeks, still haven't had court, and the internet here does not work well, and I cannot work remotely. We're supposed to go up to see Valya today, with Sergey, but it is snowing, so I don't know if we'll make it.

People often say you bottom out after 40 days here. That's about where we're at.

We've had some ups here, including the miracle of approval of Valya's separation from her siblings. For that we are grateful. But we're ready to be done.

Please pray for a miracle with the SDA. Peace to you.