Delays Already

Well, a little bad new just came in as I have been working to put this blog together. ( oh, yeah I don't recommend using dial-up while working on a blog.)
I just recieved an email from the Agency. It looks like the referral process has become longer than the 4 wks to 4 months we were told. It looks to be at least 6 months but possiblely longer. There were a couple of stated reasons. 1) Russia is trying to place more children domestically. 2) The result of the Harrison Russian Adoption case. 3) A change in the paper process.

The Good News is we were already was preparing ourself for longer than 4 months.

Just please pray that God will continue to keep our baby safe until we can get there.

The Process in a Nutshell

As I said earlier, we sent our first application in June of 2008. We were shocked at how fast things would get started. Within days we had our first agency "To Do List." We began to scramble to get passports, prepare the house for the home study, and prepare ourselves for the home study. The home study has been the most terrifying part so far, but as it turned out it was not bad at all. The home study was finished in October, and we started to get all the document ready to go to Russia. What a process that was. Each document had to be notarized and apostilled separately. (apostilled: the state dept. has to verify that each notary is legitimate) After this is done, then the agency had to review all the documents before sending them to Russia. And wouldn't you know, we had to redo some of these forms. So to make this long story a little shorter our documents were sent to Russia just before Christmas. Oh yeah, did I tell you that the Russia government takes a holiday from Dec 15 to Jan 12. Well they do. I believe our facilitator worked to get the documents translated during this time though. We found out this week that we have officially been registered in Russia since January 14th.

To Russia WIth Love

Here is our story and how we have come to love a Russian baby we have not yet seen. We have known since early in our relationship that we wanted to adopt. We didn't necessarily know when or from where, but we knew it was in our hearts. After a year of marriage we decided we were ready to start our family; however, God has had other plans. Most of those close to us know that the past 5 years have been trying ones, as we have lost multiple pregnancies. Those were very hard times, but it has brought us to here. Over the past 5 years we have requested numerous adoption packets and researched many countries. Each time we decided on a agency and a country something would happen to change those plans. I guess it just was not in Gods timing. This past June we sat together one night and discussed once again adopting. I'm not real sure why we looked up the agency we choose, but we did. We looked at all the countries again and again. There was just something about Russia. The statistics on the number of orphan children were unbelievable to say the least. It was at that moment that something began to tug at my heart and the tears began to roll. We talked about it, filled out the form, and hit submit. WOW, it was just that easy. That night I began to feel such a peace. A peace that God was working in my life and that finally we were getting closer to have the family we have dreamed of. So here we go "To Russia with love."