Fingerprinted!

Last week we headed to the Department of Homeland Security and were fingerprinted! Once we get our approval from the federal government, we should be a few days away from sending paperwork on to our adoption agency who will send it on to Ukraine to be translated.

So, we're nearing the end of the "paper pregnancy" and will soon be in a holding pattern awaiting our appointment date to head overseas to spend 5 luxurious weeks in Eastern Europe trying to figure out how to say things like:

- Where's the bathroom?
- Are these vegetables from Chernobyl (this is apparently a problem due to the radiation issues from the disaster years back)?
- Where's the closest internet cafe (gotta be able to check email, right?)?

We're not sure exactly how long we'll have to wait for the appointment date, but are hoping it will be sometime in the summer, possibly early fall. Ukraine just pulled back the number of children they will adopt to families in the U.S. to 580 . That coupled with the reality that documents from the U.S. can only be submitted on Mondays with a maximum of 8 for our whole country.

Lastly, we would appreciate your prayers for a couple grants we have applied for. We should know the outcome of one of them in early May. We could definitely use these as we still have to come up with/raise about $23K!

Re-Do!

If you ever adopt, please contact us first so we can help you with one of the most maddening pieces: Dealing with a doctor and the form that needs to be filled out correctly! Finally, after THREE WEEKS of dealing with the doctors office, we have our forms completed and the home study is officially ready to be sent off to the powers that be. Neither of us would have thought this would have been so much of a rat-race, but this little stage of the race is finally over!

Now we'll be engaged in the waiting game with the Department of Homeland Security waiting for fingerprints and finalization allowing us to bring a child back from foreign soil to enable them to be a US citizen. Who knows how long that will take, but thankfully we have a field office here in Omaha. Please pray for us to be patient as we wait on God's timing. Once the form is in hand, the rest of the documents should be able to be sent fairly quickly to Ukraine for translation. Once they have the documents we're unsure about a couple things: how long before we head over and how the heck we're going to pay for this! But, we'll keep you posted!

There's another piece of stress that hit the radar recently. We learned a couple weeks ago that at the start of the year, Ukraine had decided to adopt 1,000 children to the USA in 2007. This has changed to 580. Apparently they change things quite a bit, but that kind of news just adds fuel to the fire of our impatience!

So, this week we will apply for a grant to help pay for this whole deal! Please pray that God gives us favor and that He grants us funds to help pay for this faith endeavor.

Another Form Bites the Dust

Today marks the day we start dancing with the Department of Homeland Security because we submitted our application to bring a child back from foreign soil! We're told this form of bureacracy can take 30-90 days! We can hardly wait...but apparently we'll have to!

If you're reading this blog you obviously care about us and this will come as great news...neither Gina or I have HIV, Syphillis, or Hepatitis B! Surprise...:-)! Here's an interesting fact...most Americans are not immunized against Hep. B! If you're 21 and under or in the medical field, you probably are. Neither of us are and for a mere $800 Alegent Health will take care of that immunization for both of us! We did find a couple places that take care of it cheaper...but for one of them you have to go through an STD test...I won't go into the details of that, but I went through one unecessarily (this happened in the early stages of the adoption process) and I vowed never to do it again...EVER! So, we'll be praying about the option of immunizing ourselves, but that's not super high on the priority list right now.

One last piece of news...hopefully our home study will be approved in the next couple weeks so we can finalize a major piece of the puzzle and also apply for grants. We're also still waiting on Gina's passport, but once we get that highly prized piece of ID in we will be able to put together a large portion of our dossier (our legal representation of us to the Ukrainian government). Everything has to be notarized and we're thankful to have a friend who's a notary! From there it's on to the state offices to get them state certified! After the cerification we'll ship off all the forms to our adoption agency, they'll send them to Ukraine for translation, and then they'll be submitted to the national government there. Not sure how long all that will take, but it sounds like a lot of red tape so we're praying for an expedited process!

We're both excited to get to the point where the paperwork is done and we wait on the invitation to head overseas to meet our new little girl!

We Beat the Snow!

Yesterday, February 12th, marked the day we finished up the home study! That's a major piece of the adoption and now we just have to wait for our social worker to write it up which should take between 2-3 weeks. There was a major winter storm on its way yesterday and we made it under the wire!

Something cool happened while we were out this past weekend leading a retreat in New Mexico. A couple weeks ago, I had mentioned to our friend on staff that when we're done with our adoption I'd like to get an adoption fund going at our church for people who would like to adopt. Apparently he thought that was the dumbest idea he'd ever heard because he mentioned to the church that he was going to get that fund going so WE could benefit from it too! So, needless to say, we're pretty pumped about that. It's very cool to see God providing!

Once the home study is complete we can apply for some possible grants and finish up our dossier (our legal representation of us to the Ukrainian government). Everything has to be notarized and then certified by the Secretary of State in Nebraska. So, there's plenty left to do. Hey, we even get to go to the doctor again and get tested for HIV, syphillis, and hepatitis B!

Please join us in praying for our little girl who's over in Ukraine somewhere. I find myself often praying for the process and the financing while missing praying for her to find favor with her care-givers, that she would get enough to eat, grow into a healthy little girl, and for her to attach to us when we finally meet face-to-face. We'd greatly appreciate your prayers as God brings that to your mind.

Coordination Station

This afternoon we got a call from our family coordinator from our adoption agency! Not only is she our family coordinator, but she's also the program director for Ukraine. So, needless to say, we're very happy with that connection! We spent about 40 minutes on the phone getting info about the upcoming process and getting some of our basic questions answered. Let me tell you...this lady is SHARP! That call made it just a bit more exciting because it's another step in the process. Things like that just seem to make it all feel more real...kind of puts some meat on the bones, if you know what I mean.

So, tomorrow we will be contacting our family coordinator to choose our representative that we'll work with in Ukraine. I guess that's when the official "paperwork pregnancy" begins! All that official paperwork we'll start gathering is called a dossier and it's our official presentation of our family to the Ukrainian government (hey, paper can only reveal so much...if they only knew just how jacked up the Hollands are!) Once all that is squared away and certified by the state, it's sent on to the Ukrainian government to be translated. Apparently once it's translated and on file with the government over there, it could be all done in 6 months (although our coordinator thought that might be a generous time frame). Whatever the case, we'll keep praying for just the right time and just the right child.

So, with all that said, thanks for continuing to check back and remembering us in your prayers! I'll keep posting stuff when something new/exciting happens for us in the process.

One last piece...over on the links part I've put a link to our adoption agency (at least I'll try so if it's not there...ignore this last part!). There's some info on Ukraine there if you're interested. Later!

Milestones

Well, this week marked some more exciting times towards the completion of our adoption process. Lots of paperwork, lots of waiting, lots of stuff to try to keep track of!

Tuesday, we finished up some initial paperwork and sent it on. We also made our first payment to our adoption agency. Sending that big chunk of dough made the whole thing feel real, that's for sure! Later that day, we shot down to the post office and turned in all our paperwork for Gina and Davi's passports. In just under 6 weeks or so, we should have the documents ready to be a family of legal international travelers!

Next week, we have our first meeting with the social worker to take steps to finish our home study. Hopefully this won't take too long since we have a fairly flexible schedule that allows us to schedule meetings during the day (we all know pastors only work on Sundays anyway, right?).

Please continue to pray for us as we continue down this path. It's uncharted territory for us, but we're confident this is where God is leading and we want, more than anything, to be right in the center of His will. Thanks!

We're Accepted

This morning around 11 a.m. we got word from America World Adoption Agency that we've been approved for adoption! So, pretty soon we should hear from our contact there and see what the next step looks like with them.

The forms are coming in for our home study. As soon as all those are in we'll be doing the first of 5 meetings with our social worker. The process is supposed to take anywhere from 1-2 months. We were hoping to be done by the end of this month, but looks like that will take a little longer than expected. But, since our schedules are pretty flexible, maybe it will be a little quicker than most.

As soon as the home study is done we should be able to apply for grants. This will be huge because the cost for a little one from Ukraine is anywhere from 25-35K! So, please join us in praying for that major issue. We're praying that God would allow us to adopt with no debt.