So, what about the adoption?

Now that Moriah is here this seems to be the question we hear every day.  We are anxious to get moving again with the adoption.  The first step is to update our homestudy with the new member of our family.  This means another home visit by our social worker, letting her update everything, and sending it off to USCIS again.  We are expecting that our next visit to see Graham will be for our court date and then we will need to wait 30 days after that before we can go back and bring him home to his family.  We will try to keep everyone up to date on what is happening and hopefully get an idea of a timeline soon.  I am hoping he will be home before his birthday in July, we will see how realistic that is. 

Next Step:
Home visit to update homestudy - Wednesday, April 18th

Please Pray For:
us to be prepared for the judge's questions
Graham's heart to be prepared to join our family
an easy transition for everyone when he comes home
us to be able to line up childcare for 6 kids for our second trip
a court date to be set as soon as God allows
the judge's heart, to be understanding of our motivations to adopt
peace for Brett and I during this busy, but exciting, season of life
that the second half of our adoption journey goes a bit smoother than the first half!

Another Prayer Request

Adoptions have been suspended in some of the regions in Graham's country.  So far the region he is in is still fine and moving forward as expected. 

Please pray that Graham's region will not shut down at all. 

Pray for all of the children and families whose adoptions are being interupted right now.

Here is a short news article about the situation.

The "I raided the Christmas candy stash" Update

We finally got some news from Russia the other day.  The good news is that the issues the judge had with our paperwork were nothing big. The bad news is, none of it matters. The judge has decided that it would be better to wait until after Moriah is born for Graham to come home. This means that everything is over at least until this summer. This means that a homestudy will have to be updated, paperwork will have to be redone, medical appointments will have to be redone, we will need new visas, etc. We have already put $20,000 into bringing Graham home so that news is very frustrating!

It looks like our first visit to see Graham will still count, that is great news.  We just need to see how long the judge wants us to wait before we can go over after the baby is here.  Unfortunately, he may end up being relisted on Reece's Rainbow in the mean time so that other families can commit to him.  Depending on how quickly another family can complete the process and how long the judge requires us to wait, Graham may not be joining our family at all. 

The judge did try to reassure us by saying not worry since she is sure no one else would adopt this boy before we can come for him. For some reason that comment didn't quite comfort me... 

Brett had to remind me that Graham is God's child first.  We are hurting and frustrated but trying to lean on the knowledge that God is in control and everything that happens is to bring Him glory.

Adoption Update

Not much to update at this point.  We STILL do not have our court date.  Apparently the judge does not understand why we want to adopt Graham.  We added an addendum onto our homestudy before it was sent over to try to more clearly explain our motivation, but they still do not understand why anyone would want one of "these" children.  Right now it looks like the judge is going to be asking for more papers from us, we do not know yet what they are though.

How you can pray right now:
1.  Please pray that the additional paperwork that is being asked for can be done quickly and easily.
2.  Please pray that we will get a court date SOON!  We want Graham home before Moriah is born.
3.  Please pray for the judge.  Pray for God to guide her decision and for her to look on us with favor.
4.  Please pray for Graham, that he continues to stay safe and healthy and that he is not transfered before we can bring him home.
5.  Please pray for God to prepare our family and Graham for the transition of bringing him home.  Pray that everyone will adjust easily and that Graham will form a strong attachment to us.
6.  Please pray that the judge will waive the (now 30 day) waiting period so we can bring Graham home right away.

Fundraiser Update!

Have you seen our chip-in button on the sidebar?  You will notice right underneath that some have given money directly to us to put towards Graham's adoption.  And we are almost at our goal for what we hope to have raised by the end of the year!  We have been truly blessed by friends and family not just financially, but through their prayers and support. 

It is amazing to see the ways God has provided through this process in addition to the love he has placed in the hearts of those around us.  We saw a bill (unrelated to our adoption) for almost $1000 disappear very unexpectedly.  We have not paid a penny for any of our medical expenses in the past few months (and all 7 of us needed another round of exams/lab work to make sure, yet again, that we are fit to bring Graham home). 

We also needed to have psychological reports done on both Brett and I as part of our adoption paperwork.  Two days before we found out about these reports Brett sat next to a psychologist in his monthly CBMC meeting.  Brett contacted Dr. R and he offered to do the reports for us for free!  Our agency had given us the number of another psychologist that would have charged us $600 to talk with us and write up a report.  I love when God shows us so clearly that he is in control and lining everything up in His perfect timing.

Here is our progress on Graham's puzzle as of this week.  Almost finished!

For those that are interested, here are a few of the larger upcoming expenses that the money you have given will be helping to cover:


*Round trip tickets for our second trip: $1600 x 2 (estimated based on the price of our tickets for the first trip)
*Medical exams for Brett and I in country: $500 x 2
*Round trip ticket for Brett for a third trip to pick up Graham: $1600

Update. Still no court date.

Well, not the news we were hoping for this morning. Court dates are full for December.  Russia is in a holiday period after that that lasts until Jan. 10th. Court dates are only on Tuesdays as far as I understand so that means the earliest we will get a date now is the 17th of January.

When we started this process we were told Graham could be home by the end of July! We are still learning that adoption is unpredictable. I am also learning that I cannot control everything!

We are still praying to get the earliest court date possible and for a miracle in the waiting period being waived.  Please also pray for an easy transition for everyone once he is home. 

I will be spending the day thanking God for knowing what is best for everyone. This DOES mean that we will be able to spend Christmas with our children here, so that is something to find joy in right now.

Bad News

Our court papers are being submitted tomorrow (or right now with the time difference) and we have been informed that we have a slim chance of actually getting a court date in December.  That is not the worst news though.  Apparently Russia changed their waiting period over the weekend from 10 days to 30 days!  This means that we may not have a court date until sometime in January and then we would have to wait another month before we could bring Graham home.  I can't believe this happened, especially when we are so close to the end.

Please continue to pray with us for a miracle.  Please pray that we will somehow get a court date in December and that the judge will waive the waiting period for us.

God is seldom early, but He is never late!

I had some problems getting the document that I needed today.  After calling a couple of times I finally decided to go into their office with 5 kids and ask again if they could rush things along to get the signature I needed.  No luck.  Monday is their busiest day.....  We went back out to the parking lot and called a couple more times and finally convinced someone to get the job done.  (I really am very thankful towards them since they usually require two days to get papers signed and they did rush this for us.)  Brett met me at the building just as I was leaving with the papers at 2:15.  He grabbed the papers and ran to get them notarized before heading to the Secretary of State's office to have them apostilled.  He got there at 3:30, they close at 4:00.  Another prayer answered.  The papers have been sent out and will be flying out of the country tomorrow.

Hopefully the papers will get where they need to be on Wednesday.  They then need to be translated and sent across that country and be in the local coordinator's hands no later than Monday. 

Current prayer requests:
1.  That these papers get where they need to be on time.
2.  That we DO have all the papers now and they are all correct.
3.  That we will be given a court date in December.
4.  That God will give us favor in the judge's eyes and the adoption will be granted.
5.  This is the one that requires a miracle!  That the waiting period will be waived and we can bring Graham home right away.  This NEVER happens.  I figure if we are here to bring God glory we might as well pray for that one and give Him every oportunity to show what He can do!

Please Pray!

Last week we were rushing and scrambling to get all of our papers for the court dossier together in time to get them over to Graham's country.  Brett got the last of the papers and headed off to the Secretary of State's office, had them all apostilled, and ran to FedEx to overnight them. 

We heard yesterday that our papers made it over.  Yay!  We heard this morning that they all have the wrong date on the apostille!  Somehow the Secretary of State's office dated all of our apostilles for August 8th, 2011!?!?!??!  The funny part is that Brett made a comment that this week was going to be a normal week finally.  Back to work, back to school, no more running around.....  I actually laughed at him when he said that.  I don't know what a normal day even looks like anymore.

We need a miracle to happen TODAY to fix this problem.  Please pray that the Secretary of State's office will issue new apostilles to Brett today without all of our notarized papers (they are not in the country anymore, we only have copies now).  We also have one other form that needs to be notarized and apostilled.  That will be my job today, to run to the next town over to get these papers signed (5 kids in and out of car), then stop to get them notarized (5 kids in and out of car), then drive downtown to get them apostilled.  All of these papers need to be overnighted no later than TODAY if we are going to have any chance of getting a court date in December still.  Please pray!

Approval!

I called the USCIS again today to see if they had even pulled our paper out of the pile yet.  I about fell over when the man on the other end of the phone said, "Looks like that was just approved today."  I can't believe something finally went through smoothly!  They didn't ask any questions.  They didn't request any more papers.  I am shocked.  Thank you to everyone that was praying with us.  I was told it needs to go on to the supervisor there and then on to the mail room and we should have it in our hands later this week.  Yay!

We are still working on gathering the rest of our papers and getting the last few things together for our court dossier.  Once that is done it can be sent over to Graham's country and we will get a court date.  We are still praying to finish things up in time for a date in December.

Puzzle Fundraiser Progress

Here is the progress we have made on our puzzle so far:

Thank you to everyone that has given us cash or donated through the Chip-In!

Click here to read more about our puzzle fundraiser.

Thursday

Our time with Graham was a lot better yesterday. He was much more calm and we had a lot of fun.  It is going to be hard to leave him in a couple of days.  He loves to give hugs and say "hi" now.  We made a photo book of us and the kids to show him and he really liked that. He holds the pictures up about an inch from his face and squeals.  When he finds the picture of Brett and I he gets really excited and starts saying dada. The social worker said they will keep the book so they can show it to him every day. 

 The coordinator here was looking at the photos of the kids and told us that Josie looks like a squirrel, LOL.

I must say the squirrels here are very cute with their little pigtails!

Graham loved the puppets!

We had a chance to go upstairs in the baby house and look around at where Graham spends his days.  We could not get a photo of the main room since the rest of the children were having story time and we are not allowed to take photos of them.  We did get some pictures of the playroom and the room where everyone sleeps.  Graham was showing us his bed, #2.

After having a look around we went outside again.

Wednesday

We have around 2 hours of time to spend with Graham each day.  Our time together is spent in a tiny little room.  It works fine, but it can get a bit cramped with a three year old boy who has a lot of energy to burn off.  Yesterday we were able to bring him outside for a while.  That was wonderful.  He seemed to calm right down. 

It was so cute when his snowpants and jacket were brought in.  They asked him to sit down and take his shoes off, which he immediately did.  He set his shoes down and I wouldn't have thought anything of it, but they said something else to him and he picked his shoes up and placed them very neatly together.  Apparently they need to be put just so.  It is obvious to us that the kids are held to high standards here.  They are VERY well behaved.  Even on the plane rides there were several very young children that we never heard a peep out of.  To me that is amazing for an 8.5 hour flight. 

It looks like Graham likes structure.  We are told he is the first to move his chair onto the line after lunch and he is the first to put his clothes away in their spot each day.  Maybe he can teach his brother and sisters a few things!

We also had an opportunity to talk with the doctor and social worker yesterday and ask any questions we had for them.  We had a TON of questions.  I think we may have overwhelmed them a bit, our translator told us that people usually dont ask that much, LOL.  I know we will be thankful later that we have so much information though. 

On our way back to our hotel we drove by the courthouse where our hearing will be on the next trip.

A few more sights from our drive:

A church, under construction of course.

A tiger, the symbol of the city.

When we got back to our hotel we went for a walk around the neighborhood.

Some railroad tracks. 

An old oriental school.

Here he is!

We headed to the baby house this morning to meet Graham.  It went great.  He is a very happy and ENERGETIC little guy!  He came right to us when he came in the room.  He kept saying what we thought was "dada" over and over again.  We were quite impressed until our interpretor said he was saying, "a man."  He was very facinated by Brett's beard and whiskers and kept going back to him to rub his cheeks. 

He can say a few words.  We heard him say "bopa" (daddy) and "mama" several times.  He also had a snack of a baked apple and some cookies and we very clearly heard him saying, "nyet" (no) as he pushed the apple away and reached for the cookies.  He knew what he wanted and it wasn't that apple. 

Graham can also say hello.  I wish I would have bought him a phone to play with.  He was picking up toys and holding them to his ear like he was talking on a phone.  He also loved anything that lit up or made noise.  I am hoping it is nicer out later this week so we can bring him outside.  He has a lot of energy to burn off.

Tomorrow we will meet with the doctor and go over any questions we have for her.  The social worker will also be observing our time with Graham.  She testifies at our court hearing as to whether or not we are the right family for Graham.  Please pray that tomorrow goes as well as today and that God gives us favor in her eyes.

We are here!

Well, it is Tuesday morning right now and time for a quick update.  We left home early Saturday morning (central time) and arrived at our destination Monday morning (Sunday evening central time).  There was a lot of flying and very little sleeping!  Other than being beyond exhausted the flights went very smoothly. 

We were greeted at the airport on Monday morning by the local coordinator and a translator who brought us to our hotel.  We checked in, talked with the kids on skype for a while and then crashed.  We were able to get in a couple of hours of sleep before heading to the DOE in the afternoon. 

It has been raining and VERY windy since we got here.  I thought the weather would be similar to what we were leaving in MN, but with the wind coming in off the ocean it is COLD! 

I'm not sure how great our interview went at the DOE, but we did get our permit to get into the baby house!  I think we need to work on being a bit more detailed with our answers before court on the next trip.  Neither of us are talkers and it looks like we need to be in order to convince them that we are the right family.

This morning we are off to meet Graham!  Please pray for everything to go smoothly and for this to be a wonderful experience for all of us.

We will update with some photos when we can.

Puzzle Fundraiser!

Our adoption is moving full steam ahead as we are about to meet our new son in just a few days!  With the costs of traveling (two trips over for Lindsay and three for Brett) and the final adoption expenses in front of us, we have decided to start a fundraiser for those that are interested in helping to bring Graham home.

We purchased this puzzle to put together and hang up in Graham's room when he is home.  For every $10 that is donated to our Chip-In Button on the sidebar we will add a piece to the puzzle.  When it is finished we will glue it together and flip it over to write your name on the back.  Then, it will be hung up in a double sided frame so we can see all the names of the people who helped to bring him home.

Please help us spread the word so we can finish the puzzle!

Thank you for your support and prayers as we move along on our journey!

Q: Can one missing paper put things on hold again?

A:  Nothing can stop us when God is on our side!

There was a bit of a panic yesterday when we found out that an interagency agreement form that was sent from our agency here in MN out to the other agency in NJ could not be located.  We thought we might have to wait several more days for another paper to be sent out.  But, no, we just heard back from the coordinator in Russia that they will register our dossier without the agreement and we can send it over with the next round of papers!

So, our dossier is headed to Russia as I type this and should be in Moscow on Monday.  It needs to be translated and notorized (really!?  I know, this shouldn't surprise me anymore.) and should be in the region we are headed to by the end of next week.  We can travel a week after it arrives! 

God is good!

Can anyone guess where I might be going for my birthday?

I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.

Revelation 3:8

Why do we worry? 

Why do we ever doubt? 

Why do I forget what an awesome God I serve?

Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

 Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

Psalm 37:4,5

We promised that as long as God kept the door open in front of us - even if it was only open a crack at times - we would keep moving forward.  Well, that door that seemed to be closing more and more every day has been swung wide open in the last two days. 

I counted this morning more than 40 adoption related emails in my inbox just from yesterday and this morning.  I have no idea how many more Brett and I have sent out.  We have been filling out and sending papers every direction. 

The result of all of this and the hard work of both of our agencies is........ 

We may be headed to Russia in just a few weeks!!!!

What we thought was impossible God has done.

 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Proverbs 3:5,6

A long awaited adoption update

Things are finally moving forward again.  Our adoption agency has reviewed our homestudy and it is now being finalized!  We are going crazy sending forms today trying to make sure everyone has everything they need.

Next up, getting our visas and finishing our dossier while we wait for USCIS approval. 

Please pray that things really pick up speed and the USCIS approval comes FAST!

Counting it all joy

Apparently my challenge of bringing on the trials yesterday was taken seriously by someone!  We just got news that there are "rumblings" being heard in our little boys baby house that he may be transfered to an older children's home.  This does not make the adoption impossible, it just means many more hours of driving once we get over there. 

I think God wants to make it perfectly clear to us that we have absolutely no control in any of this.  It is all Him.  If this adoption does happen it will only be with God moving some huge mountains and He will get all the glory in the end. 

The biggest mountain right now is time!
- another homestudy to complete (at least a couple of weeks)
- USCIS processing (we are being told 75 days right now)
- complete our dossier
- wait to travel on our 1st trip
- 1st trip is approximately 1 week long
- at least a month before the second trip
- second trip is 1 week long for me, but about 3 weeks before Brett would be home with our little boy
- baby is due March 30th

But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. Matthew 19:26

Please pray with us right now for God to speed up every step of this journey!

And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. Matthew 21:22