How is it Magadan?

As I was commenting previously in wonderment, while in St. Louis at the Secretary of States Office, I met a young woman from Magadan, and explained we were adopting from that area!! She asked me how I ever got assigned to the area of Magadan. That is another miraculous story! When Wayne and I were first investigating adoption agencies and deciding on which one would be right for us, I read a story of a family that adopted from Magadan, Russia. When I read that, it was like something “stirred” inside of me. We knew we wanted to adopt from Russia, and I had heard only wonderful things about AIA, Alaska International Adoptions. So, I called the director of the agency, Olga, and told her we would like to use their agency, and that I wanted to be assigned to Magadan. She was very happy to have us join as clients, but was not very positive about going to Magadan. She stated that area was very limited and probably would not work for us. Olga said she would send us to a large area called Khabarovsk (ha-BAR-osk) yet still in Siberia with much more availability. I had already met several families who were in the process of adopting there, and although the children are beautiful, it is a more hostile area toward Americans that are adopting, and the waiting times were so much longer there. I explained to Olga that I was in a “two-year down time”, meaning, I am finishing up an educational program that requires some additional “on the job training” that will start in a couple of years. So this gave us a perfect time to bring another child into our family. Olga stated she understood, and therefore would send us to a new area just opening in our agency, the Moscow City area. I said that would be great and we went on to complete our paperwork. We contracted with the only Social Worker qualified to do a home study for international adoption. Our social worker had a reputation for completing a home study quickly…..usually within a month or less. We were thrilled about that, and were ready to get going. All the intrusive questions were answered and we had our portion turned in to her by mid June and the home visits were completed by July 8th. We anticipated a completion of the home study by the end of July, first week of August by the latest. Then the nightmare began!! The long and the short of it was the social worker went through a divorce, and her typist went through an illness……and the home study was finally completed October 28th!! Our social worker was a “freelance person” and was not associated with an agency, and that is where we started to fall in the cracks. We were having trouble getting an agency license, although she was affiliated with a business type agency and had a business license; the business she was employed with did not do home studies. At any rate, the Russian government had certain documentation standards, and essentially, we were up the creek without a paddle. Olga called us, and said she has been frantically thinking about what to do about our paperwork deficits. She stated she had no other choice other than to send us to a less strict region, and she was changing our area to Magadan. MAGADAN!! Well, that was where I felt we should be all along!! I was so happy!! Our paperwork was sent there, and translated into Russian and submitted to the Ministry of Education in Russia, and I believe they received it around the first week of December. Our boys became eligible to be placed on the data bank for adoption on December 7th, and we received a referral for them on December 8th!! We made plans to travel to meet the boys on January 8th………they were wonderful and exceeded our expectations!! And…….the rest is history!!! Or, at least, we hope the rest will be history!! So, you see, our frustrations in our delays were all a part of the plan because our boys were not eligible for adoption yet (children placed in an orphanage cannot be adopted for the first nine months they are there, to allow time for other family members to come forward and adopt them). We had to be held up for a while, until the timing is right. As I continually say, “We are providing the fuel, but God is driving”. THAT is how it came to be Mag-a-DAN!!