We have a submission date.

I just received word yesterday that we have a submission date for our dossier of April 15, 2010. I am so excited to have a date although wish it was sooner. But, God is in control and he knows when the right time for us to travel is. So I will start gathering documents in January and Feburary so that by March I can get them to our translator. The documents have to be valid for 6 months from submission date and are only good for 12 months from notarization. Therefore, I can't do them too quickly. Julia, our adoption facilitator, told me to look on the bright side about the date, Ukraine will be beautiful that time of year, not too cold and at least we have a date. In my heart I know she is right and so I am thankful.

Apostilles

The Power of Attorney forms were notarized and on Aug. 25 I went to Jefferson City to have them, along with our Homestudy, apostilled. The Power of Attorney forms were missing part of the notary information and I had to take those home and have them fixed. I then sent them by overnight mail back to Jefferson City. On Aug. 27 Cathy sent us an email introducing us to our adoption facilitator and to give us further instructions. On Aug. 31 I received our apostilled documents back from the Secretary of State's office and I received an email from Julia our adoption facilitator. I can't wait to meet her. I sent the first part of our dossier over to our translator Irina on Sept. 3 so that we could jumpstart our submission. She received those on Sept. 10. On Sept. 8 we had our appt. with USCIS and got our fingerprinting done. We received our approval letter on Sept 15. We will start gathering the rest of our paperwork once we get a submission date. Sooo, we patiently wait and know that God's timing is perfect timing. He knows when we should travel to get our child(ren) and we can't wait.

Homestudy

On April 2, 2009 I contacted Susan with Christian Family Services of the Midwest to do our homestudy. I had contacted other agencies and individual social workers as well in hopes that someone would respond in a timely manner. I heard back from one agency about an hour before Susan called me and I had to turn Susan down because I thought the first agency would be able to do our homestudy. God had a plan and the first agency turned out not to be able to help me because I was doing this adoption independently. So I emailed Susan to see if she would still be interested in doing our homestudy and of course she was. God is good. We met with Susan on May 5 for an orientation meeting and to get all the paperwork to fill out. WOW, we had done the homestudy thing before because we are foster parents but this seemed a little overwhelming. It took us the most time answering all the questions for our autobiography. We did it little by little and got most of the information sent to Susan before our individual interviews on July 20. Those went great because Susan is so easy to talk to. We then had our home visit on July 27. Susan completed our homestudy soon after and emailed me a copy to send to Cathy to make sure it read as it should. Cathy made a minor change and emailed that along with the Power of Attorney forms to me on Aug. 7. We then proceeded to get those filled out and notarized.

Contacted Cathy at Ukrainian Angels

On March 26, 2009 I contacted Cathy at Ukrainian Angels in hopes of getting more information on adopting independently from Ukraine. I came across her website after much prayer and searching for the way that God had for us regarding adoption. God is so good and it is about his timing for our lives. I couldn't believe what I was reading when Cathy responded with the details. We could do this independently and it would be within our budget. We were in, well I was. I knew that Gary would be a little skeptical and that was ok. I needed his comman sense and level head to make the right choices. I gave him the details little by little so that he could take it all in. Gary wasn't very happy with the thought of being away from home for up to 5 weeks and so it took some time to convince him of how strongly I believed that this was God's plan for us. It was not that he didn't want to adopt but that this was just not the conventional way of adopting. He knew, though, how much time I had spent researching adoption in the United States and all the information I had collected from adoption agencies concerning international adoption. The cost was always a big factor for us and now time was becoming a factor as well because of our ages. So we decided it was now or never and we could do this.