Russian Adoption Trip #1: Getting to Russia

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. In just over three weeks, we have gone from waiting for a referral for a baby boy to traveling to Russia to accept a referral for a baby girl and traveling back home after completing the first of three trips required to adopt the child. I think the easiest way to sum up the past three weeks is to give a recap . . .
Friday, May 11th, we received an e-mail from our adoption caseworker (responding to an e-mail I had written the previous day asking about how long we could expect to wait for our referral). The note said that there were not any baby boys available at that time, but that there was a baby girl. We would have to travel very quickly since baby girl was young and healthy. Basically, nothing is official about the referral for a child until the prospective adoptive parents (us) travel to Russia, meet with the Department of Education to receive an official referral (for the same child......but you act surprised anyways :), and then receive an official permit to visit the child. After you visit the child three times and determine you want to proceed, you appear before a notary and sign official documents stating that you want to adopt that child. Back to the story . . .
Our caseworker told us that she would get back with us on Monday confirming whether or not we could travel to Russia soon.
Monday, May 14th, We received confirmation that we should be in Russia on May 27th. Over the weekend, we had been researching flights and visa (the travel kind, not the credit card) expediting services. We FedEx'd our visa applications and passports off to an expediting service. David booked our travel. To our surprise, the airline that formerly flew daily service into our specific region in Russia had been bought. The merger resulted in greatly fewer flights (several times a week). Basically, we had to route through Tokyo  and then stay there for 48 hours before connecting into Russia. We would leave on Wednesday, May 23rd in order to be in Russia for the Monday, May 28th meeting with the Department of Education. The week and a half that followed were full----we packed for us and the kids, shopped for stuff we needed as well as food for the kids while we were away, made arrangements for the kids (David's parents were going to keep both kids and my parents were going to keep John Harrison for the day every other day), David tried to get caught up on work in anticipation of being gone, and we slept little.
Tuesday, May 22nd. Our Russian visas (attached to our passports) arrived and the information was all correct!! We were elated to see the FedEx delivery man :) since we left early the next day and had no room to spare and there was no room for error. We dropped the kids off at David's parents' house around 6 pm since we had to get up the next morning at 3 am.
Wednesday, May 23rd. We woke up early after only about 4 hours of sleep (max!)---we had been going to bed so late for the past week that switching to an early bedtime the night prior to leaving for such an anticipated trip was impossible. We flew first to Dallas and then to Tokyo (Narita airport). Thanks for my husband's excellent planning and research and our efforts "churning" credit cards in order to fill our bounty of airline miles in anticipation of all the adoption-related travel, our 13 or 14 hour flight to Tokyo was in lie-flat first class sleeper seats on American Airlines (I'll post pictures in a different post). First class on many international carriers blows normal domestic first class out of the water. We had numerous gourmet meals, seats that folded flat into beds, very few announcements and a very quiet, dark cabin, personal entertainment systems with Bose headsets, pajamas, the list goes on . . . It was a fun experience, but neither of us slept much at all, so we arrived in Narita Thursday afternoon feeling utterly exhausted. We took a bus (called the "airport limo") into Tokyo. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in the comfy bed and go to sleep, but David encouraged me to stay up to help us adjust to the time change. Good advice, but hard to agree to when exhaustion is overwhelming---at that point, we had not slept much in over 24 hours. We walked around downtown Tokyo's shopping district and took in all the sights around our hotel.
Friday, May 25th, we took a guided tour of Tokyo. We saw the Imperial Palace (not inside), Shinto and Buddhists shrines and temples, famous city districts, and the Tokyo Tower. We loved Japan and commented that it was a place we could imagine our family living (no, we are not planning a move!!). The culture as a whole is very respectful, kind, and clean and people take so much pride in their work--regardless of the job. There is not even a hint, though, of the Gospel, a testament that people can be seemingly "good" and "moral" without knowing Christ......this was extremely evident and incredibly impactful to us as we visited the temples and shrines and watched religious observers go through ritualistic cleanses and attempt to reach out to their gods. Unless we trust in Christ to save us and live with the purpose of glorifying God in everything we do, even the most servile acts and our best deeds are acts of lawlessness in the eyes of God . . .