No International Travel any time soon

Wow, it has been a while since I have blogged. I was hoping I would have some good news to post but there really isn't any GOOD news regarding the adoption.

We waited through the holidays and were told that our dossier was going to be submitted (again) on January 20th - last Tuesday. Well, instead we got some bad news from our agency. They told us that the Moscow City Department of Adoption (DOE) received a letter from the office of the prime minister asking them to drastically limit Amercan Adoption agencies working in their region. So essentially, our agency has been banned/kicked out of Moscow City.

This is all due to a tragic ending of a recently adopted boy's life. The little boy had been home for around 3 months when the father forgot to drop him off at day care and left him for 9 hours in his SUV in the sweltering heat. He recently went to trial and the Judge aquitted him. Russia saw this as a slap in the face and felt the father should have been punished. There were a lot of opinions expressed on the subject in the chat rooms. Some of those opinions were frowned upon by the Russian authorities.

http://loudounextra.washingtonpost.com/news/2008/dec/17/father-acquitted-manslaughter-sons-death-car/?local

The past week has been trying. We are trying to decide our next steps. Waiting it out is very hard. We also can clearly know now that our first referral is gone. We hope that she is adopted by a loving family. I took her picture off of our refrigerator this week as it is a constant reminder of our situation.

Please pray that adoptions in Russia continue- for the children and their forever families.