It's a Boy!

Meet John Vadim Riske

Born October 23, 2006

Welcomed into our Family February 18, 2011

We had court today without any problems and have a new son!!!  We plan to call him "John", but during this transition time, we are calling him "John Vadim" (pronounced Vadeem).  He is named after my father and younger brother.  He is a sweet boy and a lot of fun.  He is also 3 years and 5 months younger than Scott, the same number of years and months that Scott is younger than Nicole and Jimmy.  We are so excited that he has joined our family and cannot wait to bring him home so that he can meet everyone.  Scott is especially excited because he will share his room with John for a little while and will get to have bunkbeds. 

We woke up to a blanket of snow covering the city.  We were concerned that our facilitator would not be able to make it from Odessa and that court would be postponed to another day because the snow was not letting up.  Thankfully our facilitator arrived without any problems and the court time did not change.  Since court was at noon, we were able to go to the orphanage with our facilitator and ask the caregivers questions about our son.  We got to see where he sleeps, eats, everything.  Up until today, we were only allowed in the waiting area.  We took a lot of pictures and asked a lot of questions.  He sounds like he's such a good kid (says his mama).  Then we went to court, which was actually quite brief and the judge didn't ask us many questions.  The judge then pronounced us as John Vadim's parents and we hugged each other!  Yahoo!  Thank you Lord!

The next step was to obtain the appplication for a passport for John Vadim, which required both of our signatures.  Since Paul was leaving for Kiev tonight, it had to be done today.  We went to three different notaries (they are like attorneys) in town, but they were unable to complete it, as they were unfamiliar with the process.  So at 4:00 p.m., our facilitator decided that we should go to Odessa to get the documents.  Our taxi driver sped through a snowstorm and got stuck in some traffic jams, but we made it to Odessa 3 hours later.  Fortunately the notary stayed open for us and we were able to obtain the much needed application for his passport.  We then turned around and drove back to our small town.  I was dropped off at the hotel and Paul grabbed his suitcase and headed for Kiev to make his early morning flight to Munich.  Our hero of the day was our taxi driver, Serge, who made two round trips to Odessa and a trip to Kiev, which is 7 hours one way, all in one day.  

God has been so faithful through this journey and we are very thankful that He has placed John Vadim in our lives.  I can't wait to pick him up from the orphanage on March 1st and bring him home during the 1st or 2nd week of March.  Thank you for your prayers and encouraging e-mails and comments!