Faith

When I first heard that we may be traveling in another month, I started to panic. I started stressing about out how financially we were going to come up with the rest of the money for the adoption, flights, and additional money for when we are in Ukraine since we won't be able to use credit cards. I stressed about dealing with another bank to get a loan as we've had such bad luck with banks while trying to sell our two properties. I stressed about making the second trip to Ukraine by myself. I started stressing over how Dima would do in school and how the other students would treat him. I wondered if the English lessons have been helpful for him. I stressed how we would pay our bills while we are taking all this time off work to travel to Ukraine. I stressed how we will pay our bills once everything calms down when we all get back. I stressed whether I will have to get another job to help pay the bills and the cost of having an addition to our family. I stressed about how our two properties are not selling and how much that extra money would be so helpful. After all this stressing, I thought back to our church service last Sunday and what our preacher said. His sermon really hit me like a ton of bricks, all he said was have faith in God and he will grace us. To me, if felt like he just said "Tina, you just won the lottery". Put all of our trust in him that everything will fall into place like everything has in the past few months. It is so easy to think and worry about the bad things, but we should let God burden those worries for us. If we don't have faith that God will guide us, we will not have grace. As we go through the adoption process, I just have to remember this whenever I feel the stress of everything!

Moving forward!

Things are moving forward and a little faster than I was expecting. When we first heard that our documents were received in Ukraine, I started to try and figure out the time line. It looked like we would be very close to the December 15th deadline to accept submissions for our SDA appointment. They resume again the beginning of February. SO, I didn't want to get my hopes up and figured we'd be going in February. Dusty and I put it in God's hands from there. We received some positive news from David (adoption agent here in the states) that our paperwork was sent in for submission and there is a possibility that we may go late November/early December!! Wow, that is just around the corner! This is finally starting to feel real! We also are excited that two other families (Lori and Russ Walk, and Eric and Cindy Noel) paperwork were submitted as well so we may be over there around the same time!! So excited to hear that since there will not much for us to do when we are waiting in between the SDA appointment and our court appointment in the region where the orphanage is. Last time Dusty and I were in a foreign country, we got so sick of talking to just each other all the time, haha!

So, we will know in 2 weeks when we will need to make our flights. Hopefully we will find out soon as the seats and availability of flights are getting a little slim now since we will most likely come back around Christmas. Keep praying for things to move forward smoothly for all the people adopting!!!!

Fortune cookie

Before we decided to adopt, things were pretty rough and all I thought about was trying to start our own family. One day we ate at a Chinese restaurant and I saved the fortune that said "Success is failure turned inside out". I've had it in my wallet since and will randomly see it when I open it up to pull out my drivers license. I believed that one day we will have a family, not realizing at that time it may be because were adopting a child. This decision has taught us so much in that last 4 months since we've decided to adopt. I feel so grateful for this experience so far and what the future will bring to our family. Right now I am learning patience as we have done everything that we need to send to Ukraine. We heard our last letter has been received by Sasha in Ukraine. He will check over all our paperwork and translate all the documents and send them to the proper representatives. We wait again. The next few weeks Dusty and I plan on getting Dima's room ready. Hopefully we will hear something in a few weeks as to when we will have our SDA appointment in Kiev. This is the appointment that will give us our court date near Dima's orphanage. We will have at least 3-4 weeks to prepare for our trip to Ukraine. If all works out to travel in December, we may be over there during Christmas. We will return for about 10 days and then I will make another trip to pick Dima up. I am hoping my second trip doesn't interfere with Ukraine's Christmas which is on January 6th. I've heard everything shuts down, but I am not sure how long. I am hoping I don't have to wait any longer to make my second trip. That wait time will really teach us patience!

We're glad for McJoyful!

I found this on Youtube, these are some of the children that came to the hosting camp here in August!After looking at it a few times, I found Dima in the background with the group of boys!!! This video is almost 2 years old so it's cool to see these kids when they were younger!

Update

We've heard from Curtis that he has been visiting the orphanage and has had a chance to talk to Dima. He has passed on our love and explained that we won't be able to send letters back and forth. Curtis said he had to explain why so hopefully he'll understand. Just having Curtis there to reassure him makes us feel better! We would love to be able to send him letters, but we don't want to jeopardize anything. Curtis also has mentioned that once they get the green light, the English tutoring will start back up. Hopefully that will start within a few short weeks. I will be so happy once those start up again. I am so looking forward to being able to speak to Dima more when we see him on our first trip!

We have started getting Dima's room organized. I just finished painting it this weekend. I can honestly say that I enjoyed painting his room! I LOVE the color! I just hope Dima likes it as well. He told us his favorite color was blue so that's the color of the room. He also mentioned he liked our bedroom so we are going to try and find a bedroom suit that is similar to ours. We plan to put up a map up of the United States and will see when he gets here if he wants a map of Ukraine as well. We do not want him to forget where he came from, but we will let him decide. I have started organizing some of his clothes that he had donated when he was here for the hosting program. Since we are pretty much waiting to find out when we go over to Ukraine, we have time to think a lot about how much we can not wait until we get Dima home! We think about him all the time and have started thinking about how we will celebrate future holidays with him. I actually decorated for Halloween this year! We think about future traditions that we will start with him and wonder what he will enjoy doing here in his new home. The list goes on and on! We just can't wait!!!!!

Ukraine...not "the" Ukraine

Thanks Curtis for the article that you sent us, if anyone would like to read it, view Curtis's comment from my post where the children are receiving their tutoring lessons. After thinking about it, why have we been saying...."we are adopting a child from "the" Ukraine"? We don't say "the China or the Germany"? After thinking about it, it makes sense. Thanks for the correction Curtis and everything else you've done for all of us! We pray that things will calm down so you can continue your missionary work as this is a very important time for them to have something to believe in!

Update

We actually had a phone call from our assigned officer who explained to us on Monday that our paperwork has been approved and will be in the mail to us hopefully within a week. This is great news for us and will forward this information to the Ukraine once we receive it. We will then wait for our date to come to the Ukraine! This couldn't come at a better time as we unfortunately have been cut off from all communication with the children at the orphanage. It would have broken our hearts if we were pushed back a few months AND lost communication! Knowing how much Dima likes to know When, Where, Why, and How, not knowing what is going on would have crushed him! He would think we decided not to adopt him. We understand why the orphanage is doing this and want to respect their decision as the last thing we want to do is jeopardize anything with our and other families adoption process. With this decision to stop communication, the children that are going to be adopted will not be getting tutored in English either. We pray that things will calm down for Curtis to at least be able to visit the children in the orphanage again and for the children to receive their tutoring lessons again. In the meantime, we will stay positive and pray!

There is another family from Utah that is using the same adoption agency that we are at the orphanage. They are adopting a girl that is around Dima's age. The family has expressed concern that the children do not have many warm clothing and it is getting cold. We have been told the city dictates when to turn the heat on and may not be turned on until November. When I say this, it's not only at the orphanage, but the WHOLE city!!! Can you imagine being at your own home and not having a say on when you can turn your heat on!!!! The families that are adopting from this area are trying to collect coats for the children. When I find out more information about collecting coats, I will post. In the meantime, please pray all these children that are being adopted come home safely with no problems.

Glimmer of Hope!

After a couple of days where we went from thinking we may have Dima home before the end of the year to maybe February/March, we have a glimmer of hope!!! We are still waiting for the golden ticket from Homeland Security that will get Dima into our country when we bring him home. All the families that are around our time frame of going to the Ukraine have been working hard trying to get some answers. At one point we heard that Homeland Security was looking at about 10 weeks to send us our letter!!! That would mean we wouldn't hear from them until December! So heartbreaking! We also talked to David, our adoption agent, and he mentioned last year the Ukraine stopped accepting submissions from the end of November until the beginning of February. I don't know if that's because of the holidays and winter weather or what?? That would have put us into February to send our last bit of paperwork into the Ukraine and then wait again for a date to go to the Ukraine! Wow, what a blow!!! So, after a few days of praying and praying, Dusty was able to get some answers from Homeland Security and found out we were assigned an officer and actually had a name and number to call!! As of now he left her a message to call us back so we can find out more information for us and future families to see what the timeline. This will help other families to plan better. I can totally understand wanting to know everything as this not knowing kills me!!! From what we understand, once we are assigned an officer, it has taken a few weeks to get back the letter. Hopefully we will be able to talk to the officer to find out more information. What an emotional roller coaster ride!!!!