January 25th, 2005 Update
Just in case you haven’t realized, it’s been a while
since we have sent out an update of our adoption. This past month
has been a crazy roller coaster for us. After the holidays we geared
up to get our dossier (the whole package of notarized forms) finished
up and shipped off to our agency.
Despite our efforts, we still had not gotten Kevin’s fingerprints
back to complete our home study. This was the only thing we had
left to finish before sending out the dossier. We spent the first
two weeks of January trying to figure out what was holding up the
process without getting anywhere. Then, on January 14th, we got
an email from our agency that turned our adoption upside down.
In the last update, we told you about the political problems that
Russia was having and that it might effect our adoption. We figured
that it might mean that it was a slower process than we had originally
were planning on but we knew that everything was going to get worked
out eventually, since this happens often in Russia.
What we hadn’t counted on was the news that we received. We
were told that things had indeed worked out in Russia and that the
adoption process was once again up and running with one minor change:
the children who are available for adoption are now at least a year
old and most likely between 15 and 18 months. This news was a huge
shock and disappointment for us. We really had our hearts set on
having a baby between 6 and 10 months old.
We knew that we had to make a choice; we either had to accept an
older child or we had to switch countries. After much prayer and
research, we chose to switch our adoption to Kazakhstan. We felt
that it was the right choice for us and that God had kept the fingerprints
from being processed so that we could make the right decision without
loosing any money or even much time.
We got our new packet of information sent to us and already have
the documents prepared for the Kazakhstan dossier (yes they are
different for every country). We are still waiting on Kevin’s
fingerprints, but we know they are in the system because he had
to have them re-taken on January 21st. Our goal is to have the whole
Kazakhstan dossier to our agency by next week, just one month later
than our original goal for our Russian dossier!
God has blessed us so much throughout this whole process. It has
been amazing to see Him working through so many little things, like
delayed fingerprints, to bring the perfect child home for us. We
really feel at peace with changing countries and have found that
we might even get a child sooner, and younger, than we were planning
on with Russia.
If you would like to see some pictures of Kazak kids who have been
adopted click here:
http://www.worldpartnersadoption.org/ourfamilyalbum.html
Our prayer requests right now are that…
-We have no more delays with Kevin’s fingerprints
-Our dossier is completed without any snags
-We get quick CIS (formerly INS) approval
-Kevin is able to get the time off work to travel to Kazakhstan.
This will be a hard thing because it could quite possibly be during
this school year and the trip to Kazakhstan will take anywhere from
3 to 8 weeks.
-The finances will all work out if he has to take unpaid leave for
two months.Thank you for keeping us in your prayers. |