Traffic Day!

Today was a very long day. Julie and I left after lunch to go to see Anton. The typical hour and a half drive was almost 4 hours! It rained hard that morning so the roads were even worse than normal. Our translator/transporter told us this was the worst she had ever seen it. There were times we weren’t even moving. She did some illegal off-roading (it would be illegal in the US anyway) through construction zones and it still took that long. It was just plain awful. By the time we got there, our visitation time was supposed to be done. We talked with the social worker while Anton gripped on to orphanage doctor. He did not want anything to do with us. Then they left us alone for about 15 minutes to interact with him. Julie held him while he was always on the verge of crying. If I held him, things would have gotten ugly. She fed him pieces of bread to keep him from crying. He almost always had a quivering lip. If this was any indication of what the beginning is going to be like with him, we have our work cut out for us! Anton was a little bigger than we remembered. He is a pretty sturdy little guy. On the way home it took us 2 and a half hours. It was less stop and go traffic but more bouncing. If I hadn’t taken Dramamine, I would have been in big trouble. Julie and I both felt like we could have used a chiropractor after that ride!

We found out our court time was moved to 10:30am tomorrow. People here are making it sound like court is going to be brutal. They really grill the fathers pretty hard. And court MUST go 2 hours apparently. They are going to try to find something to pick on and then really go at it. Ultimately it isn’t a huge deal, it will all be fine, but they want us to squirm a little bit. So for my praying alliance out there, at 7:30pm Minnesota time on August 4th (it will be the 5th here) we will be in court answering some tough questions. So please remember us in your prayers. Tomorrow is a huge day for us. Thanks everybody!