Our Adoption Journey: Initial Phase
12/12/2013: Early in our marriage we had talked about adoption. We knew that someday we would do it. But we didn't know how or when. Then came along our son Clark, a log cabin and our daughter Callie. After our Callie's birth, Jason confessed that he was content with our family size. But I longed to adopt another child. Prayer is an amazing tool because God started working. Jason started talking about adoption. His heart was for Ukraine. He saw a program on TV that told about the terrible situations for orphans there. We started talking about hosting a child from Ukraine and possibly adopting the same child later. After a little research, we found out that this wasn't the direction we wanted to go. We researched some more and suddenly started looking at the possibility of adopting a child with special needs. This changed our thinking about our whole adoption picture. We had heard of the great need for older children and we thought this was where God was guiding us but what about special needs? Jason was closed to the idea. But I prayed that if this was where God wanted us to go that he would change his heart. The next day, I did an internet search for special needs Ukrainian orphans. I stumbled upon two precious siblings, one with significant special needs. My heart ached. It was the Holy Spirit. My world stopped for just a moment as I wondered if we could do this. I knew this was it! I sent Jason the children's pictures and info and he quickly texted me back "Let's do it!". I couldn't believe it. He said that when he saw their pictures he knew that they were our children. So here we go. We are doing it! Please pray for us! Pray that everything will move smoothly and that God will provide our every need.
12/16/13: The last few days have been full of excitement, worry, fear, joy and an overwhelming about of pressure. I never realized what it was like until now. Adoption is not easy. I'd say even right now at the beginning that this is going to be one of the most challenging things we have ever done. I am really bad about worrying so one of the first prayers I prayed was that God would give me peace and that he would take away any anxiety. I gave the whole thing to God. If God wants us to have these children he will make it happen. He is the ruler of the universe, so who am I to worry about it. He has it under control. Already we have seen God's work in this adoption. So many things have just come together. It's amazing! Please we need your prayers more than anything. Here are some specific prayer requests...
1/20/14: A quick update on the adoption process...paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork. We have a few more documents to obtain before we are assigned a social worker for our home study.
Here are some specific ways to pray for us...
2/11/14: It seems like it's taking forever to get this adoption going! I didn't realize all the paperwork and other things involved before the actual home study begins! So far we have completed the tasks on our end. The home study agency is just waiting on a couple of things before they can assign us a social worker to complete the actual home study. I'm hoping this starts within the next two weeks.
We mailed all of our home study documents last Friday to our agency. That was a good day!
Once we start the actual home study we will start the process to obtain our Immigration Approval.
When we first started the process, I was very worried about financing the adoption. I had to daily (and sometimes hourly) let go and give my cares over to God. Simply put we didn't have the money. At first we had "little" expenses of $100 or $30 here and there for things like passports, birth certificates, marriage certificate, fingerprints, etc. I started baking cheesecakes and this really helped with these expenses. Also we had some amazing friends who donated money. But I still didn't know how we would come up with the $2000 plus expense for all the home study fees. That's when Jason offered to sell his beloved 4 wheeler. Within two weeks it was sold. This was a huge sacrifice for him. Now we had the money for the home study and the immigration approval (which will be $890). It's amazing how God provides!
We still have many expenses to come.
Shortly after I posted on the blog, I emailed our contact in Ukraine to update him on our slow progress. I vented to him about how I was disappointed on how long it was taking for the home study agency to get things rolling. He told me that it was normal for that process to take awhile. He then wrote that based on where we are at in the process he expected us to be ready to submit our dossier in about 1 1/2 months. He said that once we submit our dossier we should be prepared to travel within 1 1/2-2 months. This was exciting and overwhelming all at the same time! We could be traveling as soon as mid May!!
The week after we submitted our documents for our home study, we were assigned a social worker. She contacted us today! We are scheduled to have our first meeting this coming Monday and our actual home visit on Saturday, March 1st. Yay!!!!
This week my parents agreed to keep the kids for a whole week so that we could work on preparing the house for the home study. It was also a trial run to see how the kids would do away from us for when we are traveling. While they were gone I made benches for our table so that we could fit all four kids there. I also finished building doors for our crawl space and we installed safety items. We are trying our best to finish the never ending stair rail project before the home visit.
God is continuing to provide funds for the adoption. In the next few weeks, we should have the majority of what we will need for the total adoption!! These funds have come through selling things, tax refunds, a bonus, selling cheesecakes, living on less, and donations. God is amazing!! When we began our adoption process in December, I had no idea how we would be able to afford it. I am so amazed to see how God is providing our every need.
Our next fundraiser will be a basket raffle. Our friend and her husband are heading it up. She has been blown away by the generosity of our community in adding goodies to the baskets! We will post details later.
The civil unrest in Ukraine has escalated in the last couple of days. Many people have died. Please pray that God will bring peace and freedom to the people of Ukraine! While we know traveling there may be dangerous we have an overwhelming feeling of peace about the whole situation. God is in control of everything and all we have to do is trust in Him! As I voiced my concerns to my husband he quoted...2 Timothy 1:7
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind."
I love him! He constantly reminds me to keep my eyes toward God.
2/28/14: Our home study visit is done! I'm so relieved!! Our social worker was so nice and she made the process so easy. On Monday, February 24th we drove to her house for an interview. She spoke to us alone and together. It took about two hours. Our home visit was changed to today (instead of tomorrow). I wanted to make sure everything was perfect. I spent all day yesterday and today cleaning. My house has never been so clean!! We knew our house was on the small side so we hoped it would pass. She said that there was sufficient space for two more children. Everything looks good and she will have it all typed up and ready for us to check hopefully by Sunday night.
On Tuesday we mailed our I-600A form to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. They received it today. It is being processed. Next they will send us an appointment to have our fingerprints done.
3/3/14: After we finished our home study Friday night, I thought that I would have a few days to rest from adoption stuff. Well that rest lasted until about 10 am on Saturday. That's when I received an e-mail from our contact in Ukraine that said we needed to send our "inquiry letter" as soon as possible. The inquiry letter, in short, is a letter expressing our interest to adopt certain children and asking the Ukrainian government to accept our dossier (which we will send later) and schedule our DFC appointment (Department of Family and Children in Ukraine, formerly SDA) as soon as possible. The letter is optional but if we want to send it we have to submit it at least 30 days before we submit our dossier. I already had it ready and I thought I could just send the letter by itself. But I found out that it had to have an apostille with it. An apostille is a form that proves the authenticity of a document. You can only get it from the Secretary of State from the state in which it was notarized. You can get it in person or by mailing the original documents (which is scary if you only knew the tremendous effort it takes to obtain some of these documents). All of the documents in our dossier will have to have an apostille. Since I needed to get this letter to Ukraine ASAP I decided to make a trip to the Secretary of State's office today to get the apostille. I decided to go ahead and get apostilles for all the dossier documents I already had as well. My wonderful parents agreed to watch the kids for the day. I was amazed at how easy it was to get the apostilles. It took a total of 10 minutes.
The letter will be in Ukraine tomorrow!
On my way home, I was able to make a few phone calls for a fundraiser we are planning. Jason had a vision early in our adoption process of having an adoption concert. We now have a date, venue, sound and several bands confirmed. I can't give a lot of details right now but save May 3rd on your calendars! Everything is falling into place for it! We are so excited!
Let me back up a bit... In January I started the process of obtaining the "most difficult document to get EVER!" the home ownership letter. The reason it is so hard to get is because it has to say exact things. Well I first tried to get it through the tax assessor's office. It didn't work. Then I talked to a friend of ours who adopted from Ukraine last year, she told me that they got theirs through their mortgage company. She said it was the hardest document to get. Long story short...I faxed a request to our mortgage company on February 3rd. They had to create a special letter just for us because they had nothing in their system like it. On the way home today I prayed that God would help me not worry about it and that He would make it happen. Well guess what was in the mailbox!! The home ownership letter perfectly worded!! But guess where it was notarized! Iowa. So guess what I have to do...I have to mail that letter that I spent a whole month getting to the the Secretary of State in Iowa to get an apostille for it. That is going to be sooooo hard. Overnight Fedex!! (later I found out that this would not work. I had to go back to the tax assessor's office and beg them to write a letter for me. After a terrible ordeal I finally got it. This was the single most difficult document to obtain out of the entire adoption process!!!)
Our final surprise today was that our home study agency finally got my criminal background check from Georgia. They sent the request for it in late December. A month later they called Georgia. Georgia said that they were having technical difficulties and that they would send it as soon as possible. Well over two months after they requested it they finally got it. So our home study is totally complete now. Ready to submit to the USCIS.
It's been an amazing day! God knew I needed it.
Continue to pray for peace and freedom for Ukraine!!
3/8/14: A few days ago we met a lady on Facebook who had done mission work at the orphanage our future kids are at. She said that she knew both kids and that she was so excited for them. She also said that she had pictures and video of them. I was so excited to see them. So far, we've seen a video of the oldest a little over 1 1/2 years ago and a picture of her when she was 13 months old. All I can say is I'm totally and completely in love! To see a video was absolutely priceless! To hear her speak and to see her smile. It was amazing. It made me long to hold her. The picture of her was taken after a surgery she had. That was hard to see but she was smiling. We are hoping to get a picture and video of the youngest also. Everyday it's getting more and more real. I'm so ready to have them. Please pray for all the details to come together. Also please pray for the situation in Ukraine. Pray for peace and freedom. We all over here in America don't realize the amazing gift of freedom we have. In some parts of the world it is far far worse.
3/31/14: We received our appointment confirmation from the USCIS for our Biometrics fingerprinting today! Our appointment is in 2 weeks. I've been waiting over a month for this. So I was so excited to get it finally! I wasn't so excited to find out that it will take 45-70 days after our fingerprinting to receive our immigration approval. We will then submit our dossier to Ukraine. We should travel 1.5-2 months after we submit it. The immigration process is taking longer than expected so sadly it throws our timeline off. Our earliest travel will probably be mid July now. But who knows we might be surprised. Please continue to pray for us! We still need to raise at least $5500 (not including airfare). We have been blown away by how God has provided so far. Between cheesecakes, selling the 4 Wheeler, tax returns, a bonus and generous friends we have raised $17,500 in less than three months. We entered the adoption process with nothing. But we knew God would provide if it was meant to be. We have no doubt he will continue to provide. Also continue to pray for Ukraine. Russia continues to be a threat. Pray that they will make wise choices and that they will receive the help that they need to defend their country.
5/1/14: Today has been a wonderful day! We received our last document for our dossier this morning in the mail. For those who don't know what a dossier is...it is a group of documents that you have to obtain in order to start the adoption process in a particular country. The document we received today was the I-171H form or the Immigration Approval form. I found out on Tuesday, over the phone, that we were approved. I had to wait two more days to receive it in the mail. In order for Ukraine to know that all the documents are actual true ones, they require an Apostille for each document. An Apostille is a form with a seal on it that confirms the authenticity of the document. In order to obtain an Apostille the document has to be notarized. An Apostille is issued by the Secretary of State of the state in which the document was issued. Most of our documents were from Alabama but one was from Georgia. I got the one from Georgia about a month ago. Now that I had all the documents for the dossier I had to drive to the Secretary of State's office to get the Apostilles. When I handed the clerk the documents at the Secretary of State's office, she informed me that the I-171H document wasn't notarized. I totally forgot to get it notarized. So I hurried to the closest bank to get it notarized. After two branch visits I found a notary. Then I headed back to get an Apostille for it. After I had all the apostilles, I sent the entire dossier off to Ukraine. It was such a relief to finally have it finished!
5/7/14: Our main fundraising event was last Saturday and it was a success! It was a wonderful night of worship, inspiration and fellowship. We are so grateful to the ones who gave freely of their time, resources and talents! We are overwhelmed by the area businesses and friends that contributed to the basket raffle.
7/2/14: As we get ready to leave, we have some specific things we need prayer for.
7/4/14: (written by Jason) Sitting in the airport now, I have to brag a little on the company I work for. They are very supportive of adoption. They have an adoption policy which allows for use of FMLA, 4 weeks of which is paid. I'm not sure how we would have done this without that added time off. Honeywell also provides reimbursement of up to $5K per child ($10K for special needs but only for domestic adoption). This will help us cover the travel expenses. All of my managers, HR and coworkers have been very supportive too. I don't think I could brag enough enough about such a great place to work.
12/16/13: The last few days have been full of excitement, worry, fear, joy and an overwhelming about of pressure. I never realized what it was like until now. Adoption is not easy. I'd say even right now at the beginning that this is going to be one of the most challenging things we have ever done. I am really bad about worrying so one of the first prayers I prayed was that God would give me peace and that he would take away any anxiety. I gave the whole thing to God. If God wants us to have these children he will make it happen. He is the ruler of the universe, so who am I to worry about it. He has it under control. Already we have seen God's work in this adoption. So many things have just come together. It's amazing! Please we need your prayers more than anything. Here are some specific prayer requests...
- Pray that God will protect our soon to be adopted children.
- Pray that if they are meant for us that God will make this adoption happen.
- Pray for me as I gather all the documents necessary. Pray that I won't run into any problems.
- Pray that our family can learn to live on less to help fund this adoption.
- Pray that God will provide the funds as we need them.
- Pray that we keep our eyes on God and that we do not get overwhelmed in the stressful process.
1/20/14: A quick update on the adoption process...paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork. We have a few more documents to obtain before we are assigned a social worker for our home study.
Here are some specific ways to pray for us...
- Pray that we will be able to get all the documents with no problems
- Pray that we get the money for the final home study fee in time. $1800 due before we are assigned a social worker.
- Pray that The Lord will keep us (especially me!) calm and worry free. Casting all our cares on Him!
- Pray for the two precious children we are hoping to adopt.
2/11/14: It seems like it's taking forever to get this adoption going! I didn't realize all the paperwork and other things involved before the actual home study begins! So far we have completed the tasks on our end. The home study agency is just waiting on a couple of things before they can assign us a social worker to complete the actual home study. I'm hoping this starts within the next two weeks.
We mailed all of our home study documents last Friday to our agency. That was a good day!
Once we start the actual home study we will start the process to obtain our Immigration Approval.
When we first started the process, I was very worried about financing the adoption. I had to daily (and sometimes hourly) let go and give my cares over to God. Simply put we didn't have the money. At first we had "little" expenses of $100 or $30 here and there for things like passports, birth certificates, marriage certificate, fingerprints, etc. I started baking cheesecakes and this really helped with these expenses. Also we had some amazing friends who donated money. But I still didn't know how we would come up with the $2000 plus expense for all the home study fees. That's when Jason offered to sell his beloved 4 wheeler. Within two weeks it was sold. This was a huge sacrifice for him. Now we had the money for the home study and the immigration approval (which will be $890). It's amazing how God provides!
We still have many expenses to come.
- Translation/notarization of dossier- $1,000
- Air fare-approx $4,200 (two trips with only Donna returning 2nd time)
- Transport/accommodation/meals- $3,500
- Passports for children-$100-$500 per child
- Orphanage donation-$500-$1,000
- Medical exams-$130 per child
- Visas per child-$420-$460
- Adoption fee-$10,000
2/19/14: On the last blog post I wrote about how slow the adoption was going. Well since then a lot has happened!
Shortly after I posted on the blog, I emailed our contact in Ukraine to update him on our slow progress. I vented to him about how I was disappointed on how long it was taking for the home study agency to get things rolling. He told me that it was normal for that process to take awhile. He then wrote that based on where we are at in the process he expected us to be ready to submit our dossier in about 1 1/2 months. He said that once we submit our dossier we should be prepared to travel within 1 1/2-2 months. This was exciting and overwhelming all at the same time! We could be traveling as soon as mid May!!
The week after we submitted our documents for our home study, we were assigned a social worker. She contacted us today! We are scheduled to have our first meeting this coming Monday and our actual home visit on Saturday, March 1st. Yay!!!!
This week my parents agreed to keep the kids for a whole week so that we could work on preparing the house for the home study. It was also a trial run to see how the kids would do away from us for when we are traveling. While they were gone I made benches for our table so that we could fit all four kids there. I also finished building doors for our crawl space and we installed safety items. We are trying our best to finish the never ending stair rail project before the home visit.
Our next fundraiser will be a basket raffle. Our friend and her husband are heading it up. She has been blown away by the generosity of our community in adding goodies to the baskets! We will post details later.
The civil unrest in Ukraine has escalated in the last couple of days. Many people have died. Please pray that God will bring peace and freedom to the people of Ukraine! While we know traveling there may be dangerous we have an overwhelming feeling of peace about the whole situation. God is in control of everything and all we have to do is trust in Him! As I voiced my concerns to my husband he quoted...2 Timothy 1:7
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind."
I love him! He constantly reminds me to keep my eyes toward God.
2/28/14: Our home study visit is done! I'm so relieved!! Our social worker was so nice and she made the process so easy. On Monday, February 24th we drove to her house for an interview. She spoke to us alone and together. It took about two hours. Our home visit was changed to today (instead of tomorrow). I wanted to make sure everything was perfect. I spent all day yesterday and today cleaning. My house has never been so clean!! We knew our house was on the small side so we hoped it would pass. She said that there was sufficient space for two more children. Everything looks good and she will have it all typed up and ready for us to check hopefully by Sunday night.
On Tuesday we mailed our I-600A form to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. They received it today. It is being processed. Next they will send us an appointment to have our fingerprints done.
3/3/14: After we finished our home study Friday night, I thought that I would have a few days to rest from adoption stuff. Well that rest lasted until about 10 am on Saturday. That's when I received an e-mail from our contact in Ukraine that said we needed to send our "inquiry letter" as soon as possible. The inquiry letter, in short, is a letter expressing our interest to adopt certain children and asking the Ukrainian government to accept our dossier (which we will send later) and schedule our DFC appointment (Department of Family and Children in Ukraine, formerly SDA) as soon as possible. The letter is optional but if we want to send it we have to submit it at least 30 days before we submit our dossier. I already had it ready and I thought I could just send the letter by itself. But I found out that it had to have an apostille with it. An apostille is a form that proves the authenticity of a document. You can only get it from the Secretary of State from the state in which it was notarized. You can get it in person or by mailing the original documents (which is scary if you only knew the tremendous effort it takes to obtain some of these documents). All of the documents in our dossier will have to have an apostille. Since I needed to get this letter to Ukraine ASAP I decided to make a trip to the Secretary of State's office today to get the apostille. I decided to go ahead and get apostilles for all the dossier documents I already had as well. My wonderful parents agreed to watch the kids for the day. I was amazed at how easy it was to get the apostilles. It took a total of 10 minutes.
The letter will be in Ukraine tomorrow!
On my way home, I was able to make a few phone calls for a fundraiser we are planning. Jason had a vision early in our adoption process of having an adoption concert. We now have a date, venue, sound and several bands confirmed. I can't give a lot of details right now but save May 3rd on your calendars! Everything is falling into place for it! We are so excited!
Let me back up a bit... In January I started the process of obtaining the "most difficult document to get EVER!" the home ownership letter. The reason it is so hard to get is because it has to say exact things. Well I first tried to get it through the tax assessor's office. It didn't work. Then I talked to a friend of ours who adopted from Ukraine last year, she told me that they got theirs through their mortgage company. She said it was the hardest document to get. Long story short...I faxed a request to our mortgage company on February 3rd. They had to create a special letter just for us because they had nothing in their system like it. On the way home today I prayed that God would help me not worry about it and that He would make it happen. Well guess what was in the mailbox!! The home ownership letter perfectly worded!! But guess where it was notarized! Iowa. So guess what I have to do...I have to mail that letter that I spent a whole month getting to the the Secretary of State in Iowa to get an apostille for it. That is going to be sooooo hard. Overnight Fedex!! (later I found out that this would not work. I had to go back to the tax assessor's office and beg them to write a letter for me. After a terrible ordeal I finally got it. This was the single most difficult document to obtain out of the entire adoption process!!!)
Our final surprise today was that our home study agency finally got my criminal background check from Georgia. They sent the request for it in late December. A month later they called Georgia. Georgia said that they were having technical difficulties and that they would send it as soon as possible. Well over two months after they requested it they finally got it. So our home study is totally complete now. Ready to submit to the USCIS.
It's been an amazing day! God knew I needed it.
Continue to pray for peace and freedom for Ukraine!!
3/8/14: A few days ago we met a lady on Facebook who had done mission work at the orphanage our future kids are at. She said that she knew both kids and that she was so excited for them. She also said that she had pictures and video of them. I was so excited to see them. So far, we've seen a video of the oldest a little over 1 1/2 years ago and a picture of her when she was 13 months old. All I can say is I'm totally and completely in love! To see a video was absolutely priceless! To hear her speak and to see her smile. It was amazing. It made me long to hold her. The picture of her was taken after a surgery she had. That was hard to see but she was smiling. We are hoping to get a picture and video of the youngest also. Everyday it's getting more and more real. I'm so ready to have them. Please pray for all the details to come together. Also please pray for the situation in Ukraine. Pray for peace and freedom. We all over here in America don't realize the amazing gift of freedom we have. In some parts of the world it is far far worse.
3/31/14: We received our appointment confirmation from the USCIS for our Biometrics fingerprinting today! Our appointment is in 2 weeks. I've been waiting over a month for this. So I was so excited to get it finally! I wasn't so excited to find out that it will take 45-70 days after our fingerprinting to receive our immigration approval. We will then submit our dossier to Ukraine. We should travel 1.5-2 months after we submit it. The immigration process is taking longer than expected so sadly it throws our timeline off. Our earliest travel will probably be mid July now. But who knows we might be surprised. Please continue to pray for us! We still need to raise at least $5500 (not including airfare). We have been blown away by how God has provided so far. Between cheesecakes, selling the 4 Wheeler, tax returns, a bonus and generous friends we have raised $17,500 in less than three months. We entered the adoption process with nothing. But we knew God would provide if it was meant to be. We have no doubt he will continue to provide. Also continue to pray for Ukraine. Russia continues to be a threat. Pray that they will make wise choices and that they will receive the help that they need to defend their country.
5/1/14: Today has been a wonderful day! We received our last document for our dossier this morning in the mail. For those who don't know what a dossier is...it is a group of documents that you have to obtain in order to start the adoption process in a particular country. The document we received today was the I-171H form or the Immigration Approval form. I found out on Tuesday, over the phone, that we were approved. I had to wait two more days to receive it in the mail. In order for Ukraine to know that all the documents are actual true ones, they require an Apostille for each document. An Apostille is a form with a seal on it that confirms the authenticity of the document. In order to obtain an Apostille the document has to be notarized. An Apostille is issued by the Secretary of State of the state in which the document was issued. Most of our documents were from Alabama but one was from Georgia. I got the one from Georgia about a month ago. Now that I had all the documents for the dossier I had to drive to the Secretary of State's office to get the Apostilles. When I handed the clerk the documents at the Secretary of State's office, she informed me that the I-171H document wasn't notarized. I totally forgot to get it notarized. So I hurried to the closest bank to get it notarized. After two branch visits I found a notary. Then I headed back to get an Apostille for it. After I had all the apostilles, I sent the entire dossier off to Ukraine. It was such a relief to finally have it finished!
All of the apostilles for all the dossier documents cost $168.65. Our next step is to pay for the translation of our dossier. It will be $1,000. Once our dossier is translated it will be submitted to the Department for Family and Children (DFC) in Ukraine. We hope this will happen the week of May 14. We will be issued an appointment with the DFC in Ukraine hopefully within 1 1/2 months from that date. So we are looking at late June or beginning of July. We still have many more expenses.
$10,000 Adoption fee
$840-$920 Children's visas
$260 Children's medical exams
$1,000 Orphanage donation
$1,000 Children's passports
$3,500 Transport/Room/meals
$3,776.10 Airfare to Ukraine
$1,328.00 Airfare Jason after court
$840-$920 Children's visas
$260 Children's medical exams
$1,000 Orphanage donation
$1,000 Children's passports
$3,500 Transport/Room/meals
$3,776.10 Airfare to Ukraine
$1,328.00 Airfare Jason after court
$5,983.40 Airfare for 4 to return
$27,767.50
Needless to say, we do not have this. We are over $10,000 away from what we need. Please pray that God will provide the funds. We have a great fundraising event planned for this weekend. Please pray that God will use this event to touch lives. Yes, we do need the money but this event is about worshiping our creator above all. God is bigger than anything and I have no doubt that he will provide.
We had about 125 people come to the concert. All together $1871.50 was raised. Thank you all who gave! It means so much to us and the Casey's. As many of you know, the Casey's were in Ethiopia on the night of the concert. As we planned the concert we joked that as soon as we plan something things would start happening. They found out only a few days before, that they had to fly out that weekend. The following Tuesday legally their youngest adopted son was theirs. Please pray for them as they now wait for the paperwork for their oldest to go through. They are experiencing many difficulties with his adoption. As for us, we have had many exciting things happen recently. Two days before the concert we received the last document we needed to complete our dossier. It was our immigration approval from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. I had to drive to the Secretary of State's office to get an apostille for each document in our dossier. Then it was shipped to Ukraine that same day. Our dossier was submitted to the DFC in Ukraine today! So what does that mean? Well about a month from now we will receive a notice telling us our appointment date for our meeting with the DFC in Ukraine. The appointment should be about two weeks after we receive the notice. So we are getting very close! In my last blog post I listed the airfare. This was extremely expensive. Since then we have found a travel agency that specializes in adoption travel. They can get our airfare for about $5,000 less. This is huge. I was getting concerned about the cost.
6/6/14: Our appointment date for the DFC in Ukraine is July 7, 2014! We will fly out on July 4, 2014. We are so excited!!
6/25/14: (written by Jason) Dear friends, I want to thank all of you for your encouraging words, donations and especially prayer. I say "especially prayer" because I believe prayer is powerful and absolutely necessary. If you've read the information earlier about the missionary who visited the orphanage and spent time with our soon to be adopted daughter, you know she was praying for us years before we even knew where Ukraine was actually located. Thousands of miles away and years ago, God had a plan. I was open to adoption early in our marriage but it had to be the way I wanted and definitely not special needs...this was a very selfish thought on my part. My sweet wife was praying and she kept praying and continued to pray for my heart to change. I did not know she was praying for me but God begin to reveal things to me and was slowly changing this old selfish heart. Now very soon we will be boarding a plane, flying for 12.5 hours and staying a month in another country to adopt two precious children...all because someone years ago started praying.
“I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.” — Romans 15:30
Some days my heart just breaks out of nowhere. I'm not sure how one can develop such a love for children they have not yet met but I long for the day I meet them. I try not to think about it or over analyze how that day will go or how the kids will react to us. I'm not sure that waiting is the hardest thing but I know it's not the easiest thing.
6/6/14: Our appointment date for the DFC in Ukraine is July 7, 2014! We will fly out on July 4, 2014. We are so excited!!
6/25/14: (written by Jason) Dear friends, I want to thank all of you for your encouraging words, donations and especially prayer. I say "especially prayer" because I believe prayer is powerful and absolutely necessary. If you've read the information earlier about the missionary who visited the orphanage and spent time with our soon to be adopted daughter, you know she was praying for us years before we even knew where Ukraine was actually located. Thousands of miles away and years ago, God had a plan. I was open to adoption early in our marriage but it had to be the way I wanted and definitely not special needs...this was a very selfish thought on my part. My sweet wife was praying and she kept praying and continued to pray for my heart to change. I did not know she was praying for me but God begin to reveal things to me and was slowly changing this old selfish heart. Now very soon we will be boarding a plane, flying for 12.5 hours and staying a month in another country to adopt two precious children...all because someone years ago started praying.
Please continue to pray for us. God has a purpose for these children and the enemy would love nothing better than to stop this adoption. Pray that God will work to remove barriers, will guide the hearts of those people along the way in this journey and will provide for and protect our children at home while we are gone. Prayer is used to accomplish a wartime mission and we are involved in a spiritual battle.
“I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.” — Romans 15:30
Some days my heart just breaks out of nowhere. I'm not sure how one can develop such a love for children they have not yet met but I long for the day I meet them. I try not to think about it or over analyze how that day will go or how the kids will react to us. I'm not sure that waiting is the hardest thing but I know it's not the easiest thing.
7/2/14: As we get ready to leave, we have some specific things we need prayer for.
- Pray that there will be no complications or delays from the time we have our appointment on July 7th until our court date (which will be approx 4 weeks later.)
- Pray that we start feeling better. We are battling sinus infections.
- Pray that our children at home stay well while we are gone.
- Pray that they will not miss us too much. It's going to be so hard to be away from our babies for a month!
- Pray that the children we are adoptine will warm up well to us while we visit them at the orphanage.
7/4/14: (written by Jason) Sitting in the airport now, I have to brag a little on the company I work for. They are very supportive of adoption. They have an adoption policy which allows for use of FMLA, 4 weeks of which is paid. I'm not sure how we would have done this without that added time off. Honeywell also provides reimbursement of up to $5K per child ($10K for special needs but only for domestic adoption). This will help us cover the travel expenses. All of my managers, HR and coworkers have been very supportive too. I don't think I could brag enough enough about such a great place to work.
Praise God! We are with you 100%. Feel in love with them when I saw the pictures.
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