Happy Birthday to me!

Got a great birthday present today... received word from our adoption agency that our paperwork is officially on its way to Russia to be translated!  We are very excited!

Answered Prayer!!!

Thank you so much for your prayers about our SLOW processing of our application to adopt with the US government. After begin told on Monday that it could take 6 more weeks, the form arrived in the mail today!!  5 days is definitely better than 6 weeks. I am on my way to the post office to mail all of our documents we have gathered in the last 5 months to our adoption agency. They will prepare the documents to send to Russia! Soon, we will be assigned a region of Russia that our child will come from.  I hope to have another update really soon!

Update...

Psalm 37:7   "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him."

Molasses...southbound Tollway at 8:30...and our adoption.  Sometimes a pause can be good, like just before the punch line of a really good joke.  Sometimes a pause can be bad, like when your computer locks up.  Right now we are sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for the U.S. government to give us the thumbs up to proceed with the adoption.  Pretty much since we started this process, we have had a long 'to do' list with lots of different things to work on.  Things were moving along nicely, with each next step following pretty much as expected.  Check marks were flowing very nicely down the list (a very satisfing experience for the type A(nn-Marie) among us).  Now it seems we are at one of those uncomfortable lulls. 

Four weeks ago, we went to get fingerprints done for an FBI background check. Uncle Sam will process these, along with our home study, and issue us a document that gives us permission to adopt internationally.  Once we have this form, all of our paperwork (which is sitting on my dresser in a very thick stack) can be sent to Russia.  So, Ann-Marie checks the mailbox everyday, anxiously waiting for the form.  Ann-Marie called this morning to check on the status and was told it is "still in queue".  She was told they "try" to process those forms within 75 days... so based on that, we still could be waiting another 6 weeks.  Yep, I'll put this in the computer lock up variety of pauses. 

While we wait, we are challenged to keep focused on where God is leading our family, the child waiting for their home here with us, and God's sovereignty and timing in everything. 

(Ann-Marie talking now)... On an exciting note, a great friend, Jolin Housewright, gave us two special books today. There is a history to these, because Jolin bought these books as a Christmas present for Maddie when we were adopting before, in 2006.  But, after I got pregnant and the adoption was stopped, she put them away, saving them for the last 4 1/2 years, in case we ever decided to adopt again. So, today she gave these two books to Maddie.  After dinner tonight, we read the books as a family and had fun talking about the child who will be joining our home, in God's perfect timing!

Patience...

Brent and I have completed everything that is necessary for us to do at this point in the adoption process. All the paperwork on our end has been complete. Right now, we are waiting for 2 important things to happen before all our paperwork can be sent to Russia: We need to hear back from the United States about an appointment to get FBI fingerprinting done and we need to receive official permission from them to adopt overseas.  We also need to mail a large stack of papers that I have (25 different documents, some multiple pages in length) to Austin to be apostilled, which basically means that the notarization of each of these forms is verified by the state of Texas.  Once all of this is done, our documents will be ready for our adoption agency to prepare to send to Russia.

Which brings me to the issue of patience.  I received a large envelope in the mail yesterday with 13 documents from the homestudy agency. I was planning to run to the post office to mail these to Austin to get apostilled only to find 3 blatant typos in the forms!  This is the 4th time something similar has happened with our homestudy agency (in particular, it is apparently very difficult to spell my name correctly...)  Basically, this is going to mean a delay of a week while we wait for new forms to be created, notarized, and mailed to us.   Amazingly enough, I am not as frustrated by this as I would expect myself to be. 

Back in school, I used to hate group projects.  I preferred to do everything myself... definitely an issue with control on my part.  Over the years, life (and God) has taught me that I can't always do it on my own.  God has been shaping, molding, and humbling me to see I need others, and sometimes the very person I need may not do things the way I want them to.  The process of adoption is requiring us to depend on a lot of other people: multiple people in government offices in both the US and Russia, multiple workers at our homestudy agency, multiple workers at our adoption agency, friend and family for support, and most of all God.  I have to remember that God's timing is perfect, and I want to allow Him to use this entire process as an opportunity to depend on Him on a deeper level as we continue to depend on others to bring our child to our home.

One step down....

Last weekend was our homestudy.  I found myself more stressed about this than I thought I would be.  Overall, I think everything went fine.  Maddie, in all her honesty, told the social worker that the positives of adopting included having another sibling to boss around. She also informed the social worker that the negatives of adopting including her parents being even bossier if there are 3 kids in the house.  The social worker seemed to take this in good humor.  She was also very nice about letting Dylan show her every toy from him room, including his favorite; a personal concert on his drum set.  We are now waiting for the social worker to finish writing up the homestudy.  It will then be sent to the Department of Homeland Security so the U.S. government can process our request to adopt.  After we finish up a bit more paperwork, most of our materials will be ready to be translated and sent to Russia.  I'm hoping this can all take place before the summer! 

We are very blessed by special people in our lives who support us and love us as we travel this journey.  We are very excited and feel a lot of peace about the process.  At the same time, there are understandably moments when I ask myself if we are crazy!  In these moments I am reminded of how God brought us to this path, and of the child waiting for us in Russia.  We cannot wait to hold him or her in our arms!

I ran across an article a few months ago in the Wall Street Journal about the church and adoption.  We found it interesting that our calling seems to be part of a larger movement in the church.  Here is a link to a Wall Street Journal article:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703743504575494263102089970.html

The Home Study!

After spending the last month gathering a lot of paperwork, getting examined by doctors, and obtaining reference letters, we found out today that our social worker will be coming out next week for our home study.  I have to admit that I am a little nervous about this. There is quite a bit of  vulnerability in having a stranger in my home to assess if our home is a good place to raise children!  However, the lady seems very nice and excited to help us in our adoption journey. 

I recieved a list of safety issues that the state of Texas requires us to address for our home to be safe for children.  Apparently, my home is not currently safe for my 2 existing children because our glass doors don't have a sign on them to protect a child from crashing into them ("Warning: Running Into A Glass Door Hurts"), and we don't have regularly scheduled family fire drills including a bell or chime to alert our children to the presence of fire in the home (as if my screaming and the blaring of smoke alarms aren't enough).  Anyway, needless to say, our weekend ahead is going to full of making our house "safer" for the social worker's visit.  Also, as part of the home study, each of us will be interviewed by the social worker (including the kids...by themselves...alone...enough said).  She estimates this will all take about 5 hours. Yikes.

We appreciate your prayers as we have this done.  She will be at our house for about 3 hours on Thursday, the 10th, and again for about 2 hours on Sunday the 13th.  We will update later on how that goes!

The Process

We have had several people ask us details about how the adoption will work, how long it will take, and what it involves.  From all we have read and been told, we can expect a lot of the unexpected when it comes to international adoption.  In dealing with 2 governments and ever-changing laws and regulations, there can be changes and bumps in the road.  So, even as we attempt to explain the process as we understand it at this point, we are expecting that time frames and details may change along the way.

Most likely, it will be 18 months-2 years before the adoption is finalized. Things could go quicker, but those are the best estimates based on the way things are right now.  In order to be able to adopt internationally, we have to obtain approval from both the United States and Russia.  This involves a lot of paperwork!  We are in the process of preparing that right now.  This includes everything from extensive financial information, medical exams and records, questionnaires about our personal history, our marriage, and our parenting, and recommendation letters. In addition, a social worker comes to our house to do a homestudy. This includes a licensed social worker coming to our house, interviewing all of us (kids included), studying our home, and writing a report based on her findings. Once all of this is complete (we expect it to take 4-6 months) and once we have the approval of the United States, our information is put together in what is called a dossier by our adoption agency. It is then translated to Russian and sent to Russia. At this point, we select a "region" of Russia that we will be adopting from.  Russian officials in that region are given our dossier and information about the type of child we are willing to adopt. Then, the waiting begins.

The amount of time we wait can be unpredictable.  We are requesting to adopt a child around 2-3 years old.  We are not requesting a specific gender for the child, so we could get a boy or girl. Most likely, we will get a boy, as girls are more "popular" to adopt.  Time frames can vary a lot, but we have been told it will likely be between 6 months and a year before we get matched with a child.  This matching is called a referral. 

When we receive a referral, we will be notified by our adoption agency that we have been matched with a child.  We may receive a lot of information about this child, or we may know very little.  Then, we will travel to Russia for about 5 days to meet the child, accept the referral, and begin the adoption process.  We will then come home and wait again for 2-4 months before returning to Russia for about 3 weeks to complete the adoption and to bring our child home! We plan to take Maddie and Dylan with us on this second trip. We had concerns about leaving them for that long, and our adoption agency has recommended this as a good opportunity for the kids to bond with their new sibling.  We are looking forward to it as a family adventure! When our child lands in the US, he or she will be an American citizen! Here is a link to our adoption agency's website for more information about the process involved: http://adopt.childrenshope.net/programs/russia/index.php. 

One aspect of this that is really exciting to us is the reality that, most likely, our child has already been born and is waiting in Russia for a home.  So, even though we do not know who he or she is, we know that God does and is preparing us and this child to be together soon!

If you are interested in reading more about some of the things that have motivated us to adopt, we can highly recommend the book "Fields of the Fatherless" by Tom Davis (http://www.amazon.com/Fields-Fatherless-C-Thomas-Davis/dp/0971410011#_).  This book has been very inspirational to both of us in driving us to  step out in faith in what we believe God is calling us to do.