For the past month we've been thinking we were nearly finished with our paperwork, but we ran into snag after snag that prolonged the process. We got our last document notarized and apostilled last Tuesday.
Finished. Finally. Phew!
We overnighted our complete documents (a.k.a. dossier) to our family coordinator, expecting her to take a few days to examine them and call for any corrections from us. However, on Wednesday afternoon, we got an email stating: I am happy to report that I received your dossier today...it looks perfect. I will now send it on to Yuri in Ukraine for translation and submission. She Fed-Exed our documents to Ukraine that evening. Woo hoo!
We expect it to take about a month for our dossier to be translated and submitted. We think we'll be going to Ukraine around October, but that's just a guess. We're just so glad to have all the documents out of our safe!
As we wait to travel, we're also waiting to see how God is going to provide for this adoption financially. We've paid roughly $4000 of the estimated $27,000 and are waiting to hear back regarding some adoption grants we've applied for. We're so grateful that God is raising up people to build assistance programs so that more orphans can be rescued. Click our links to Shaohannah's Hope and Hadassah's Hope to check out a couple.
We have sent out letters of request to help with this adoption. Thank you so much to those of you who have contributed. For many people, it may seem strange that we're asking for financial help with this adoption. This might seem like a plea to help us build our family, but this is not at all about that.
We believe that adoption is on God’s heart. The Bible describes God as the Father to the fatherless, explains that He delights in setting the lonely in families, and has much to say about caring for orphans. We chose to adopt from Ukraine because of the lack of Christian influence in that country. Not only do we have the opportunity to provide a child with a loving family, but we also get the privilege of helping her understand God’s plans and purposes for her life.
If anyone is interested in partnering with us financially in this mission, please contact us. We can let you know about different tax-deductible options. The plight of the approximately 100 million orphans is larger than any of us can handle on our own, and we hope that many will play a part in helping save this life and others.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Forms, Forms, Everywhere There's Forms!
OK, so we thought we were done with forms! As it turns out there's one left that we need! The agency we used to do our home study just renewed their license with the state. We're waiting to see if that's ready to go on Monday, the 14th over in Lincoln. If it is, we hope to have all our forms FINALLY done! Please pray for the whole paper-chase situation. Just when we get ready to cross the finish line, it keeps moving!
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Guess What?
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent us a letter today. In the opening paragraph it says, "It has been determined that you are able to furnish proper care to an orphan or orphans as defined by Section 101 (b)(1)(F) of the Immigration and Nationality Act." Some of you may be thinking..."Yeah, that applies to Gina...but how'd Dave get by?" Hey, I'm just thankful Gina's normal and we'll just leave it at that! So...
Tonight we get all our paperwork notarized and hopefully tomorrow head over to Lincoln to get them certifiied by the Secretary of State. From there is a short certified insured mail hop to Virginia to our adoption agency followed by a trans-Atlantic airmail to Kiev, Ukraine for translation!
As I write, we are in the process of preparing for her arrival. What has been our guest bedroom is rapidly becoming a pink wonderland. The bed frame is assembled awaiting a mattress, wallpaper is stripped, the holes spackled, and the paint is moments from coat one.
Tonight we get all our paperwork notarized and hopefully tomorrow head over to Lincoln to get them certifiied by the Secretary of State. From there is a short certified insured mail hop to Virginia to our adoption agency followed by a trans-Atlantic airmail to Kiev, Ukraine for translation!
As I write, we are in the process of preparing for her arrival. What has been our guest bedroom is rapidly becoming a pink wonderland. The bed frame is assembled awaiting a mattress, wallpaper is stripped, the holes spackled, and the paint is moments from coat one.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
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!
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!
Saturday, March 24, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
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!
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!
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
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.
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.
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