Medicals Completed!

The next hurdle in our journey has been cleared! The medical appointments are done!

Yesterday started with me trying to get my body on schedule and Sara taking advantage of the opportunity to sleep in. I was up at 5:30 am and she slept until 12:30 pm. I took the opportunity to shower, e-mail and update the blog, and even took a nap for a few hours in that time. We got a call from our friends, the Franks, to wake us up letting us know that they had arrived from Illinois. We decided to get going for our day at that time and venture to the grocery store around the corner. We bypassed the fresh octopus and squid, left the caviar for another day, and opted for two “fresh” muffins and some yogurt. All tasted good going down, and I sit here over 24 hours free of dysentery, so I think we’re ok. The highlight of the purchase was the 2-liter of Mountain Dew. The bottle’s so cool, I’m bringing it home with me.

Sara and I then decided to explore the streets a little on our own, scoping out places to eat and internet cafes. We stuck to the main street that our hotel was on, but it was wonderful to get out in the fresh air (by fresh, I mean full of cigarette smoke and diesel fumes). Passing Sbarro, Baskin Robbins, and KFC, we worked our way to a huge statue of someone famous, I’m sure. We snapped a picture of a few stray dogs in the park in front of the statue and dropped a few rubles into the hat of man playing classical guitar in an underground walkway. The tiles lining the walkway made the acoustics incredible, and the guitar reverberated all the way up the stairs to street, captivating me as I entered the darkness. Dodging cars the whole way, I found the walk more exhilarating and exciting than dangerous, and we made it safely back to the hotel.

We had a chance to visit with the Franks that evening after they got themselves rested and refreshed, which was great. We decided to brave the mean streets again and hit the Sbarro for pizza. The walk of one whole block across the street took over 20 minutes, thanks to me missing the underground walkway and working ourselves way out of the way. At least we worked up an appetite. We found what we believed to be a cheese pizza, did our best to convert centimeters to inches and rubles to dollars, and ordered caveman style (with pointing and grunting…my apologies to cavemen everywhere, no disrespect intended). We hiked back to the hotel (only 5 minutes the right way), and ate our pizza in the fourth-floor lobby just across from our room.

Sleep did not come nearly as easily the next night, drifting in and out until past four in the morning. The result was, instead of getting on schedule, we woke up again at around noon. Small lunch of bananas and a doughnut from the grocery store, and then it was sitting around waiting for our drive to the medical center for our appointment with 8 different doctors. Not knowing what we were in for, we piled into the van at 2:30 and sped through the streets of downtown Moscow to the center, visions of Russian prostate exams dancing through my head (not a good visual to be sure).

After doing our best to fill out paperwork, we waited…..and waited….and waited some more. One couple at a time, we were taken into a room, visited with a doctor for a few minutes, returned to our seats in the waiting room, watched a really bad Dolph Lundgren movie and a re-run of the X-Files (both dubbed in Russian), rinsed, and repeated 7 more times. We arrived at the doctor’s office around 3:00 pm, and hopped in the van to return to the hotel at about 6:30pm, 3 ½ hours later, having touched our nose with our fingers and eyes closed at least 4 times, saying “niet” to virtually every question that they had, palpating lymph nodes I didn’t even know I had, and having both of my shins examined (still can’t figure out what that one was for). We all passed!!!!

Relieved, we accompanied the Franks to KFC, did our best to order chicken sandwiches, fries, and water (still, not carbonated….she didn’t understand what I was talking about and I got carbonated). A brisk walk back, and we were all ready to turn in. We are done with Moscow for now. Tomorrow it is off to Krasnoyarsk. We are all so excited, and the anticipation keeps growing the closer we get.

We have had so much headache, heartache, and stress in this process, and it has all threatened to leech any amount of joy right out of what we are doing. But yesterday I decided that I was putting that all behind me. I’m not going to let anything take away the joy of giving a little boy a home, even though it seems as if the evil of this world desires to keep him confined where he is, with no hope or future, and no chance to see what God had done in his life so far and what God has planned for him for the future. It has been a long road, but by the grace of God we are going to bring this little boy home with the knowledge that we now have the strength to handle anything that life might throw at us with this little boy, and that the strength of our love for both God and him are going to weather us through any storm. More to come…..

JP