Day 44 & 45 - The Roller Coaster Ride Continues...
Well, the Ukraine Schlaack adoption adventure continues to be the ride of our lives. The good news, as most of you know now, is that Lisa finally got the court papers, and was able to get Vika out of the orphanage yesterday (Wed.). They then had to travel further North to get her new birth certificate which they were able to accomplish. To say the least, it made for another long day, but we are thankful to God for another step completed.Jonathan ended up being quite sick all day on Wednesday. He was not eating anything and experiencing a good deal of pain in his abdomen. By the time Lisa and Vika returned home, Jonathan was not doing well at all. So they thought they better call a doctor. They called Dr. Trish Brown here in the USA and an Ukrainian doctor. The symptoms seemed to indicate that he may have appendicitis. They decided that he should go to the hospital. Well, long story short, they ended up deciding not to go and watch him through the night. The hospitals in Ukraine tend to be a bit risky, especially when doing things like surgery. So that was a bit scary, but today Jonathan seemed to be doing much better. PTL!
So today, Lisa and Vika had to return to get her new Ukrainian passport. It was a 3 hour drive. Lisa brought the airline tickets that have a return date for Apr. 3rd in the hope that it would encourage them to complete the passport before then. Well, things got interesting because the passport lady decided that she needed some more money to process the passport. We would prefer to call it a $500 fee to expedite the passport. But most people in the world call it extortion. Lisa could have decided not to pay it, but there was a hint that if she didn't pay it would take 2 weeks and maybe longer to get the passport. After payment was made, the passport lady was much more accommodating. The good news was that she said the passport would be completed by next Wednesday. Of course that doesn't mean it will actually happen or that extortion will not occur again, but we're hoping for the best.
So here is the best case scenario at this point in time. If Lisa is able to get Vika's Ukrainian passport on Wed., we hope that she can make it back in time to apply for her U.S. passport. The U.S. Embassy can sometimes complete the passport the same day or the next day. If everything works out well, we hope they will all fly back to the USA on Friday Apr. 3rd.
P.S. They also got pulled over again today by the police. Lisa is not sure what the driver did wrong if anything, but it appeared that he got a ticket. You see, here is proof that I, Johnny, was not the problem. It was Lisa all along that was causing us to get pulled over by the police! (Ha HA!!!) :) LOL
