It's Off!

What a flurry of adoption activity the past 2 days have been! We had our immigration fingerprints taken last Thursday and so we called Monday to check on our status, and were quite surprised to receive our approval just a couple of hours later! Wow! That is unbelievably fast! Of course, we weren't expecting approval that fast, so Monday evening turned into a flurry of activity looking for a notary to get the last of dossier papers ready. I then drove those papers to Montgomery for apostilles this morning and shipped them out via UPS on the way home. Bye bye baby!

It feels good to get that step out of the way, but at the same time, I am starting to panic-ha! We have so much to do to be ready to travel and to bring 2 children home. I can't wait but I am so tired just thinking about what we have to do!

Lot of people have asked me what comes next. Basically, our dossier will now be translated and submitted to our Eastern European government. We will wait on them then to invite us to travel to meet our children. Once we accept their referral officially (and fill out lots more paperwork etc) we will go before a judge and prayerfully become offically their parents. After a 10 day wait after court, we will be able to spring them from their baby house and get a new birth certificate, passport, visa, etc, and bring them home! The entire process takes around 6 weeks in country.

I have also thought so much about how God is redeeming our April. He is bringing beauty from our ashes with the timing of this adoption. At this rate, we are likely to find out our travel date around April 11th. These children couldn't begin to replace my spunky one, but they are giving us a reason to keep moving through this dark valley. We love them even though we haven't met them yet, and we know that they will have their own spaces in our hearts, just like each of the others. It is has always amazed me how we are designed to love each child with our whole heart, even if we have a house-full.

On the fundraising front-we still have a long way to go. God is providing, but with the speed of this process, it is hard not to get discouraged. We have faith that the funds will be in place as we need them. We are still selling coffee and t-shirts (see the right here) as well as having a new give-a-way for baseball lessons (see below). Thank you for all your support!

I hope and pray that we will be able to announce submission and then a travel date very soon! And I would love to be able to announce that we are fully funded.