Some Other God Stuff

In the last post, I mentioned how we felt that we saw God orchestrate the events that led to our being allowed to re-apply for the I-600A when all previous indications were that we would have to wait until June to do so. I would like to document some of the other things that have happened to us along the way that we feel have clearly indicated that God is directing us in this effort.

The first thing is that we even had this idea in the first place. We currently have the perfect, All-American, family. Two healthy and happy children and secure enough finacially to the point that Stacey can work part-time, more for the interaction than for the money. So the day in January 2005, on the way home from church, I surprised myself when I asked Stacey if she had ever thought about adopting. I don't know why I asked, I guess it had been in my head and I guess I was expecting her reply to be "No, why?". But that wasn't her reply. She said that she had, so God must have been planting the seed.

We casually talked about it and prayed about it the next couple of months and decided that the least we should do is investigate it and see if it really was God leading us or if we really were just crazy. For some reason, it worked out that only I was available to go to an adoption seminar put on by a very reputable international adoption group out of Evansville. As I sat there and listened to their "commercial", it didn't seem right to me. They made the comment that "If you are wanting to adopt just to save these children from their fate as orphans, then don't do it because after you get them home, then they are your children." I just felt like that was the whole reason that we wanted to adopt. So I went home thinking, we are off the hook. This obviously wasn't for us. But Stacey and I continued to pray about it and we decided to go to one more of these kinds of meetings together, just to make sure.

One of the ladies that is helping us started that meeting with a prayer. She followed it up by saying that this process wasn't easy and then she gave her testimony about how she had tried to adopt twins but one had died from pneamonia before she was able to complete the process. We were ready to start the process that afternoon. That was in March or April of 2005.

Not all of my questions had been answered at this point. I still prayed and asked God whether or not I could love adopted children the same as my own. It is probably a question that some other perspective adoptive parents have asked and I was definitely asking. The experience of watching our children being born formed an immediate bond that is unbreakable. I asked this question repeatedly of God over the next month or so. It just so happened that I was to spend 2 weeks in Madison Wisconsin for work. From my hotel to where my meetings were being held, it was a 10 minute drive, tops. As I made that drive throughout the 2 weeks that I was there, I found a Christian station to listen to on my "commute." On the last morning that I was there, when I turned on the radio, the announcer said, today's devotion will be on Adoption. I guess I woke up and turned the radio up louder. The very next words out of the announcer's mouth were this:"I would like to thank God for showing me the grace to love my adopted children the same as my own." Now, you can make of that what you will, but as for me, I felt like it was the audible voice of God speaking to me.

So we began working on all of the paperwork hurdles despite knowing that some things were going on in Ukraine that may temporarily shut the country down to international adoptions. We have come to learn that the unexpected is typically expected, so that really didn't worry us because we knew things could change at any moment. However, as we waited on parts of our paperwork to be completed and we took our time completing other parts since Ukraine was effectively shut down anyway, a little bit of doubt began to slip into our minds.

At about this time, our church was doing a sermon series on the fruits of the Spirit. They had been taking them in order but for some reason they decided to swap gentleness with self-control and were going to tie the gentleness sermon into an adoption weekend. The fact that the sermon was going to focus on adoption seemed to lift our spirits. But God was not done. That same weekend, Stacey was scheduled to go on a Friday night retreat with the other CBS (Community Bible Study) leaders. Stacey teaches about 12 three and four year olds once a week. Furthermore, we usually go to church on Sunday morning, even though our church does have Saturday night services. That weekend, it was a relatively nice weather weekend in November and the kids and I were out raking leaves around 2 PM when Stacey got home from her retreat. For some strange reason, we diddle-daddled around trying to decide about whether or not to attend the Saturday night service. We decided, at the last minute, to attend the Saturday night service.

On the way to church, Stacey told me how she had learned during the Saturday morning of her retreat how a little girl in her class had been adopted from Ukraine. As we sat down for the Adoption service, in our church of about 4,000 attenders, spread over 4 weekend services, Stacey noticed the little girl's mother just a few pews down. (CBS is non-denominational so Stacey was unaware that this family attended the same church as we did.) After a very moving service on adoption, we went to pick up our children. We usually will divide and conquer and one parent will get one child and the other parent will get the other child. This weekend, for some reason, we both went to get our daughter first. When we walked up to the door of our daughter's class, the little girl that is in Stacey's CBS class, that was adopted from Ukraine, was the first one that we saw and she quickly greeted us with a very warm "Hello Mrs. Stacey." It was definitely a moment where we both felt the very strong presence of God.

This post has taken all weekend. On the next post, we will try to list some of the expenses that we have incurred during this nearly 2 year process.

Finally, a Little Bit of Movement??

Well, we have finally seen the smallest bit of movement on somebody else's part other than our own as far as the paper work is concerned. After handing our dossier to the folks that are helping us in late December, we began the waiting game again. With the new procedures in Ukraine, the facilitators have to get appointments with the SDA (Ukraine's Governmental Adoption Authority) to drop off dossiers. This week, we learned that our facilitator had already had the appointment to deliver our dossier to the SDA. During the appointment, they do an initial review of the paperwork to see if it is in order. Recently, the SDA has begun to require that all paperwork submitted be "valid" for another 6 months past the submittal date. They found only two, very minor, items with our paperwork, both having to do with this 6 month date issue. The first, had to do with our Dr.'s license. Our KY Dr.'s license expires every year and ours just happened to expire in March every year. Fortunately, he already has his new license for the following year so we were able to easily obtain a copy of his new license. The second issue, was slightly more complicated.

One of the BIG document hurdles in international adoptions is the I-600A. I won't explain it here but it requires a Homestudy ($$$, which requires a lot of documentation) and it requires fingerprinting through the FBI. For some strange reason, fingerprints expire in 15 months from the date that they are taken and the I-600A expires 18 months from the time that approval is granted. Because we had been waiting so long, our fingerprints were set to expire in February of 07 and our I-600A was set to expire in June of 07. I felt like this could be a problem when we were preparing our documents this past December so I began to call the Department of Homeland Security (DHS/USCIS) and e-mail to the embassy in Kyiv to see if we could get some sort of extension or waiver because of the situation in Ukraine. At that time, not only did they tell me that we could not get an extension, they also told me that I would have to wait for that document to expire before we could reapply for a new document!!! So in my narrow little mind, I envisioned all of our other paperwork expiring while we waited for our I-600A to expire and being left with beginning all over again with everything in June.

However, that is where God comes in. Actually, he has been in this process all along, but it is one of the places that I can now actually see how His hand has guided us. After speaking with the person that is helping us and learning what forms needed to be updated, I decided to contact the individual in Indy with the DHS and plead my case. I called her and left messages. She called me and left messages. I just happened to be out of the office that afternoon and my cell phone was out of charge so there was no way for her to get in touch with me. That gave Stacey and me an entire night to pray. And did we pray. I prayed about everything I could think of at that time. For God to make a way for us to be allowed to reapply, for God to help me to control my disappointment if we were forced to wait it out even longer, and for God to grant us the perseverance to keep on going if we needed to begin again in June.

We all know that God answers prayer, and he did and I saw it first hand. I had sent an e-mail to the lady in Indy with DHS explaining our situation because I didn't think she was understanding my phone messages. She responded, again via e-mail, with a message that appeared hopeful, but with e-mail, it was hard to tell. When we talked to each other on the phone, she agreed that we needed to resubmit our application immediately in order to get a new approval. This is how BIG God is. He can move the Federal Government to action.

We had appointments in Indy for the 30th of January to get our fingerprints taken again with the FBI. However, the same day that I spoke to the lady at DHS, just happened to be the same day that they take walk-ins at the Louisville Application Support Center (which just happens to be on the same city block as my office building). They allowed us to take our fingerprints, in Louisville instead of Indy, and a week before our appointment, which it states very clearly on the letter that they are not supposed to do. We got the money order and the rest of the paperwork together, (we had it all as a result of doing our dossier again in Dec of 06) and it was in the mail within 24 hours of talking to the lady on the phone. She said it will take her 10-15 days to get us a new I-600A approval.

What does this mean?? I am not sure right now. It means another trip to Frankfort and some more mail to Indy in the short term. It probably means we will be sending some more paperwork to Ukraine sometime in the middle of February, but from there I am unsure. It means more prayer for me and our family. Hopefully for some others too. We couldn't have made it this far without it.

MY GUESS IS, that our updated paperwork will be resubmitted shortly after it is received, that the SDA will take up to 20 days to review it, and then, hopefully, we will get a registration number. After we get a registration number, we are in "line" to get an appointment. We will keep you updated. But for now, we can start to see the beginnings of a little movement.

New Year, New Hope, Still Waiting

No news to report really. We assume everything made it where it was going. We are both reading a good book that we got for Christmas. It is called Hungarian Rhapsody by Jim Derk and it is the story of a man and woman that traveled to Hungary to adopt 6 kids. I am generally not a leisure reader but I have been really intriqued by this book. I have read over 150 pages in just 3 days by just reading at lunch at work. My wife spoils it for me though because she reads it at night and laughs and cries and then I make her tell me about what she is reading. I enjoy it the second time too though.