Well, it's been a hard week on the adoption front. Without going into too much detail, the pickiness of the government agency in Alex's home country has resulted in us having to re-do several documents...in one case we're being told that the lack of a hyphen in our last name in an official document means it has to be redone. When I went to get the paperwork from my doctor's office, it took more than an hour to get it done, mostly because of issues with notarizing the doctor's license. This isn't surprising given that there's half a page of very exacting specifications about how these documents are to be completed, down to the color of the ink. On top of that, my doctor initially didn't want to provide a copy of his license -- which he's never been asked for before -- out of concern that it might be used for illegitimate purposes (i.e., selling Viagra over the Internet). (He did provide it in the end, though.) After all that, we found out that one of the foregin government agency's codes had been entered wrong, so we had to go back to the doctor and have them complete the document again and notarize it again.
And today we got the great news that because the foreign government's adoption bureaucracy has been re-organized -- and therefore renamed -- we will have to re-do much of the paperwork that we've already completed for the dossier, including new apostilles (basically a type of document certification done at the state level)...just so that the new name of the reorganized government bureaucracy will be on them.
Meanwhile, Alex continues to languish in a mental institution intended for adults...waiting, waiting, waiting.
I hereby take back every bad word I've ever spoken about American government bureaucracies...including the IRS, which took seven months to process our income tax refund. We have no idea how good we have it.
Obviously, we're pretty frustrated by this setback, which may kick our timeline out by several weeks, at least. Our other preparations for Alex -- figuring out bedroom space, connecting with doctors and schools, learning a few words of his native language -- are going fine. We continue to get great community support, both locally and through our extended online community. Please pray for us as we take deep breaths and start over on this paperwork nightmare.
- Jerry
