To Anya, With Love: Prayers Answered & Exciting News!

Today was a success! Thank you for your prayers. Our first task was to take Anya to have her passport & visa photos made. We drove out to Zelenagorsk and took Anya out of class to go to a “portrait studio” there in Zelenagorsk. The first one we went to was closed on Mondays and the second one we went to was little more than a closet (see the picture – yes that is the “studio” and all of the pictures on the wall were the displays – the 6 of us could barely fit in the room). Anya had her international travel passport picture made, but the woman there would not take Anya’s US Visa picture because she didn’t know the guidelines required (we will have to have that one taken here in St. Petersburg or in Moscow before our Embassy appointment). We found out that her picture will not be ready until tomorrow at 11 AM & then we returned Anya to the orphanage and headed back to the city to pick up our interpreter from the school where she is a teacher. Once we had Katya, we waited for further instructions from our coordinator. We were told to go eat some lunch and she would meet us there to ride south of St. Petersburg to the city in which Anya is registered as a citizen. Apparently all Russians are registered by address and orphans are sometimes still registered where their parents are living. If I understood correctly, Anya’s father is registered in the town that Anya is registered in and her mother in registered in a town nearby. There are over 40 “district” citizen registration offices in the St. Petersburg region – and then 1 office in the city itself. Anya’s registration was in the “region” and it was an office that our coordinator had never been to before. Since each office can make up their own rules about what they require to verify citizenship, our coordinator had been calling for the past week to find out what this office would want from us. She called 3 times and spoke with the same woman and received different answers each time. Also, it wasn’t clear exactly who had verified Anya’s citizenship when she was registered and we were told we might be sent to another city if they could figure out who did the original registration (some of this was so confusing that I really couldn’t understand what exactly was going on with this!). When we arrived at the citizen registration office at around 3:00 PM today, the woman told us that she had never done this before and she would have to ask a supervisor about what would be required from us – the supervisor then said that they would need to call the city government in that town and ask them. After this occurred, we were told that we would need a copy of the orphanage director’s passport and a written request from her. Well, it would have taken us at least 5 hours of driving to obtain this and the office would then be closed. Fortunately, after 2 hours of waiting, the woman said that she would stamp our documents today if she could get a faxed copy of the documents today and we promised to bring the originals tomorrow. What a blessing! Our coordinator was very worried that we would have delays in getting this paperwork completed. One family last week waited 4 days because of things as simple as computer systems down, electricity at the building off, etc. So, we are very fortunate to have overcome this hurdle. Now, we will be able to apply for Anya’s travel passport tomorrow (after driving to Zelenagorsk to pick up her pictures, of course). The exciting news is that we are going to go ahead and take Anya with us tomorrow when we go to Zelenagorsk and keep her with us at our hotel! We will then make application for her travel passport and it should be ready on Wednesday. After we go to the passport office, we will purchase our tickets for our trip to Moscow (we are still trying to decide between taking the train or plane). On Wednesday, we will pick up the passport, pick up our interpreter and then head to the orphanage for a farewell party for Anya and her group. We have 2 suitcases full of gifts for the kids and care-givers. We’ll pick up cake & ice-cream and Anya will get to help with the preparation. Sometime in the evening we will return to the city and leave by plane or train for Moscow (probably around 10 PM). We’re not sure of all the details & anything could happen to our plans, but right now this is our schedule. What happens in Moscow, we will only find out when we get there (we will have a different coordinator there). This has definitely been a test in patience (I’ve had some practice this year, but Dad is really getting his feet wet). I know if was difficult for him to sit back and not question everything when we were being driven around the city, waiting for hours and not being told much. And when I did ask about what would happen next or tomorrow, I was told “we will talk about that later”. There’s really no need to argue because as I have learned, it is what it is! Enjoy a few pictures from today – we’ll try to have more tomorrow when we will actually spend some time with Anya and not in the car. Thank you for your prayers! Please continue to pray that the little details continue to fall into place so that our plans to be home with Anya on Saturday will be realized.