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.