Dossier Submission

Great news, our dossier was submitted yesterday and now the wait for a travel date begins.  How excited we are that we could be travelling soon. We praise God for showing us His will for our lives and can't wait to see the child(ren) He has in store for us.  I have been so inspired by all the blogs I read of those who are in Ukraine right now or have recently returned.  Thank you for sharing your adoption journey.

Ukrainian Parliament Vote

The Ukrainian Parliament will be voting  once again on October 8 for a moratorium on adoption from their country.  Please be in prayer that God's will be done.

Homestudy Registration

Our homestudy will be registered with the SDA tomorrow and hope to get a quick submission date for our whole dossier.  Since we are looking at an older child (ren) the submission date should be soon. Yah!!!  I am finishing up apostilling the last three documents tomorrow and then sending them DHL to Ukraine.   

Not sure if everyone knows that the SDA has a website where you can look at children that are available for adoption, although not all are available for people outside of Ukraine.  It is http://sirotstvy.net/ua/child_needs_family.  There are about 90 pages of children.  I hope you enjoy looking at the children as much as I have.

Parliament Vote No Go

Ukrainian Parliament postponed the voting on introduction of moratorium on international adoptions based on request of Parliamentary Committee on Youth and Sports, which sent a letter to Head of Parliament stating they need more time to prepare the proper language as to moratorium and... align accompanying legislation. No new date on voting was discussed. Usually, several months pass before parliament will return to this issue.

Praise God!

Document Shuffle

Well, part of our documents have been apostilled and are on there way.  We had to redo our medical forms and a form from our mortage company because they are out-of-state and that notary couldn't be apostilled by our state.  Hope to have all forms done by the end of next week and then off to Jefferson City again to do the final apostilles.  We are sooo excited and hope to get a submission date soon.

Yah!!! We got our Immigration approval today.

How excited I was today to find in our mailbox our I-171H form from Immigration. We have been approved!!!  As soon as I get a couple of documents corrected and all documents apostilled they will be on their way to Ukraine. 

Please be in prayer that the Ukraine Parliament does not pass the moratorium on adoption from their country so that every family that is approved to adopt these precious children will be allowed to do so.

Sad but Hopeful.

We found out today that the girl we were interested in does not want to be adopted after all.  She wants to stay in Ukraine and find her biological parents. While it is so hard to let go of a child we have only seen pictures of, I am hopeful because God is in control and will give us the guidance we need.  The agency we are working with has shown us some pictures of another girl that is available at the moment and so we will pray about this situation.  I talked with NBC (Immigration) today and they have received our paperwork but it has not been processed yet.  I have to call back next week and check on it again.  So we wait.  In the mean time I will be traveling to Jefferson City next week to get the rest of our documents apostilled and then sent to our agency. 
I am truely enjoyng reading all of the blogs of familes that are in Ukraine right now or are in the paperwork stage of their adoption from Ukraine.  Thank you for sharing your lives, struggles, hopes and blessings.

The Waiting Game

I sent our documents to NBC (Immigration) on Aug. 23. We had to request an updated I-171H form to include the age range of the child that we are hoping to adopt. I contacted them by phone today to see if they had received our documents. The woman on the phone was very nice and politely told me it would take up to 2 weeks once they received it to sort it and get it to a worker to enter in to their system. I will contact them again next week and hope to hear some encouraging news. This is the only document we have left to collect and we can't get a submission date for our dossier until we have it. So we continue to keep our eyes on the prize and know it will all be worth it.