When Life does not go according to plan

This is a hard note to write but we have put it off for several days, and feel you have the right to know what is going on at this point in our life. Mike and I were hit by the economy last week, his company has given two definitive economic strategies for the next 6 months, either taking a 10% pay cut or 1 week off no pay per quarter for the next two quarters until they can decide if they can make it in this poor economy, if not their will be layoffs. At the same time the boys tuition came in for next year up 4.2%. We are having challenges with our paperwork, we had to have our medicals redone because they were in black ink and need to be done in blue, we are not sure about the future right now and are in need of some deep prayer to find God's direction in all of this at this time. Besides the challenge with our paperwork and DSS. Financially, it would be in normal life decisions, not wise to spend $20,000 plus, when you may not have employment in the fall so we have some hard decisions to make and some major concerns about the increase in our tuition costs for two in college, their senior year for both of them. Mike is also feeling that he needs to be on the job and not leave now, because if they do cut back, he feels him being gone to the Ukraine could cost him our only income. Please pray for us as we need to hear God speak clearly to us at this time. Besides the outlay for the adoption there would be another person to support on a diminishing salary with increasing costs of living, and we want to do the right thing, we want to trust God. If we are to move forward with this process we need peace or clear confirmation, both of which we do not have at this time. We appreciate you standing in the gap in prayer with us. God is and He is good all the time, even when we don't understand what is going on.

Need a little prayer

You know when you are driving down a road or in a parking lot you all of a sudden see a speed bump and have to adjust your speed and approach? We have come to a slight speed bump, please pray for God's intervention in a matter that is small but can become large without God's hand directing the process. I need to write a letter for clarification on a matter, please join us in asking for wisdom and the correct words to convey what needs to be done and that this will be the end of this matter. Then ask God to protect and go before us with this process so that all are satisfied in this situation and that God's will will be seen so clearly in all that we are doing. It has been a week of spring things: sowing seeds, visiting friends and family outside, I am ready for spring. God's greatest miracles of rebirth are seen at this time, new baby 'critters', flowers emerging from their winters sleep, fresh crisp winds waking up and refreshing the world that has been at slumber and the promise of hope, the celebration of our Savior. What a blessing that God's creation gives life anew to all He created, may God bless each of you with renewal and new life this spring and may He bless many children with a new life and a hope in Him.

Time Marches on :)

I cannot believe how fast time seems to go by. We spent two weeks in Connecticut. Mike had a training to go to and I snuck along. I really needed the break. We saw a good many of my family: Aunts and Uncles and cousins. It was a good time for me to reconnect, since we don't know when we will get the opportunity again. We came home to our boys who are on spring break. Our youngest had his wisdom teeth out on Monday and I began to think we will be doing some of this all over again and that was a good feeling for us, not the end of another thing. We have a campout this weekend with our Scout troop and soon we will have another child involved since ours are no longer in. We have been gathering papers and beginning renovations on the room we will be transforming into another bedroom. That has been exciting. Spring is coming in spurts now and my garden is going in. We are excited about the next few months. Please pray for us our hearts desire is to go to Ukraine the end of May through June. We still have funds to gather, we have most of our dossier paperwork together and we have begun the list of what to take. Our trip to Connecticut was a trial run for the what to take and we were able to live for two weeks out of one suitcase a piece :) and a small backpack each, plus my computer. We feel good about that. Our Scouting has really helped us prepare to travel light. We even had food and some cooking items with us, ie can opener, backpack utensils, and water bottles. We did realize we forgot some things like my cell phone charger :( and panty hose :) which I hate to wear anyway lol. I was able to do some more research for homeschooling our new son and getting reunited with educational materials. It has been 5 years since I homeschooled our youngest. I studied Ukrainian history and read some of the poetry from Ukraine's poets, while on our trip. We are STILL working on the Ukrainian alphabet I told Mike maybe if we turn it on and sleep with it going it will stick :)and his southern accent is still hilarious. We are working at rewriting our will and looking at our finances, which we are grateful God has been working on for us. He is so awesome in His plans for us. I am starting to get some anxiety about flying so please pray for that. We thank you all so much for praying for this young man we hope to adopt and for God's provision. We are so amazed how much of what we are doing is similar to when we were expecting our first two. We are now doing nesting things like getting the house ready, and preparing for his future. We are gathering clothing items as best we can, hoping to get some idea of possible sizes before we go. God is so awesome is all we keep saying as we look at another child who will be a miracle to us.

Language Learning and other things

Hi it has been a very busy two weeks. I have continued to gather our dossier papers, to make plans for our redecorating project, which we have decided to do the paint and such when we bring our son home, and our most interesting activity to date. I realize why they send young people to school, my memory ain't what it used to be. We are seeking to learn Russian and it is an interesting task to say the least. Their alphabet is familiar and not at the same time. For example M=M, but N=H, or S=C. They have similar letters, I would say about half and half of those make a sound we associate with another letter. Mike laughs because I have a favorite letter it is pronounced to me, this is sounded out e-kratka. I think my alphabet is starting to sound like theirs and it is becoming more familiar each day. I so want to understand our son he will probably surpass us because he will have the necessity to speak English here in the states, I hope to pick up much while we are in Ukraine.
I want to cover a topic I have not seen on another web, but feel every potential adoptive family goes through it. And that is doubt or fear. Fear of the unknown, doubt of the capability to parent, and for me fear of an airplane flight. I get claustrophobic and 8-14 hours trapped in a metal tube overwhelms me at times. To me that is the worst part of the adoption process, flying. We have had our fears of how will this change our life, how will we discipline, how do we make up for 16 years of having no parent to full family. And we think this young man has to face the same type of fear and doubt. We will take him home with us to another culture and country, away from home. How would we feel? God keeps giving us total peace after one of these episodes. I cannot leave him to be put out on the street, I cannot forget about him and the impact he has already had in our life. There are so many unknowns, but this much I know, there were many unknowns with both of our children and for that matter with our marriage as we walked down the aisle, the factor that superceded all of these doubts and fears was peace and love. Knowing God loves us enough to be there through the trials and challenges any path in life takes us, peace that God in His glorious Word keeps affirming within us. Fear of telling my in-laws, who have a negative attitude towards adoption, fear of how overwhelmed he will be when he gets to the US and we have such a materialistic society compared to the shoebox of treasures he may have from his whole life. How do we begin the healing process for him. God has opened every door and we have willingly walked through. How can we not, We feel His presence and see His hand touching us and our sons all three of them. Will it be a struggle you bet, it was with our natural children, will we embrace another culture, yes, for when we cease to see all God's people where they are and to understand their experiences we cease to grow. We are on a little 2 week trip right now, for several reasons, I have returned to where I grew up and it has helped me see how well God blessed me from the culture I grew up in to the one in which I now live, two to do some genealogy research for my melting pot family, Mike is here for his company doing training, and I am refreshing myself from the frantic pace we had and realigning our plans and goals for the next month or so. It has given me a chance to see how God has never left us in this process and how He has worked for us as we walk day by day in the plan He has for us. We are blessed. Is it easy? No it hasn't been from the start, we stepped out in faith knowing there was no way possible to afford this at this stage in our life and yet He has met every financial need as we need it. We still have the brunt of that need ahead but we are faithful that we will not only see God working for us but we will see Him abundantly bless us and our new son. We set out on this path with the realistic knowledge that their would be trials and challenges in our travels much like a peak bagger that seeks to climb to a new mountains pinnacle. We will face storms, rocky trails, uphill climbs, but when we finish the race at the mountain top we will be at one of God's high places. A breathtaking view of His magnificent creation and more mountains to climb and more trails to take. We put one foot in front of the other and walk into an uncertain future, but all future is uncertain here on earth, the only consolation at times is who we are traveling with and the fact that Jesus our guide knows the path we are on and the Holy Spirit nourishes us and gives us strength and the God of the universe created this for us to take journeys on to be sojourners in foreign lands or better yet lands of the unknown. Do we know what the future has?, not here on this earth, but we know who holds our future and who we hope will one day hold our son's future. He heals, He teaches, He comforts, He returns what the locusts have eaten, He blesses, He upholds us with His righteous right hand, He gives wisdom, He directs our paths, He leads us, He sees us, He provides for us, He loves us, He gives grace and mercy... He is our all in all our sure foundation in the things of this life. So we walk on and climb this mountain knowing we will reach the pinnacle only to find the next mountain. What have I learned, I have learned that if we never take the journey we never grow and learn. We choose to step out in faith. On this trail there have been tears, laughter, abundant joy, lessons learned, doubt, growing faith, belief and unbelief, there has been hopes and realitiy, life is like that but as we follow the servant leader we learn that in the sacrifice of leaving the status quo, the comfortable and the known, He takes us and expands us, all He asks is that we walk day by day with Him. When I take each day as it comes it is amazing how much we have accomplished because someone authored these steps, He is our all in all and if we never leave our safe haven we never see how He can and will use us for His will, in His time, for His glory, how humbling that is and how joyfully we step out in faith, knowing all is uncertain for us but is sure and true in His scheme of things. So if God lays adoption on your heart step out in faith knowing He has a plan, will it be perfect no because after all look who He has to deal with, but will He bless us most certainly, He loves us so very much. There can be no regrets for the paths already traveled, but we cannot stay where we are we must move on which will you do in your own Pilgrimage of life. God has a plan and it is one of new directions and journeys He feels we must take for Him to achieve His kingdom goals. If you feel a call to adopt and you in fear or doubt back out, how do you feel when God reveals what his purpose was. For instance this is an uncertain world, economic hardships, greed, anger and malice, lust, and selfishness, wars and rumors of wars. If in a year He calls us home and you get to see who is coming through the gate, is one of the least of these that we could have impacted among the lines that are entering the kingdom. The orphan that was killed on the street of Ukraine by skin heads, was someone's heart tugged at some point and they abandoned him. How would you feel if on your way to your adoption into the heirship of the most high, He changed His mind or decided the challenges of raising us as His children was not the most attractive and He gave up. Not all are called to adoption, some are called to missions, some even to both, but all are called, what is your calling, will you step out in faith and follow Him so far this journey had left us totally exposed, out of our comfort zone, filled with fears about raising another child while we are already empty nesters and, by the way, we love this time in our life even though it is bittersweet that our first two sons are grown. But He has never forsaken us, when we faced some unbelievable obstacles and overwhelming odds in some situations in life, He has always blessed us even when He has said no to our deepest desires.He loves us and calls us to take up the cross and follow Him. What is your cross, carry it into the world and you will never regret following and loving Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Pray for the families with doubts and fears, that they will see God's will so clearly and feel His presence so acutely, and will know the path they must take. On a personal note please pray for me for clarity of the paperwork for the dossier and for our finances. We are nearing what we hope amounts to our travel time. I cannot believe how far up this mountain journey we have already come, and yet we still don't see the landscapes for the rocky trail and trees that lie before us the turns in the trail and the provisions that lie ahead, but He is waiting with open arms to bless us at the top as we look back over the trail we traveled to get there. I plan to "peak bag" this climb :) Dos Vedanyah! and I know that's not spelled correctly, but soon real soon :)

By the way, in order to help with our funding I have become a consultant for Creative Memories, I love their digital storybooking (scrapbooking) products. If you scrap or want to do digital scrapbooking you can go to my website and find out more and the money we earn from this venture goes for our adoption expenses my website is www.mycmsite.com/digiscrap. I did not plan to get into this line but I love it and it all started because we heard the young man we love and want to adopt wants a scrapbook of pictures that are his. So we are working with a friend to have his own storybook. They are really so neat, easy to do, and take far less time than traditional scrapbooking. So in this digital world I have become a digital girl and I have finished two storybooks that I will publish soon and the best one will be the one we hand to our son when we meet him :) They are far less expensive then traditional, a twenty page 8x8 storybook can be done for around $40 which includes the predesigned pages and the printing and hand sewn binding. Digital is our future and what will you do with all your digital pictures, this is a way to get them off the place you have them stored and tell your life - your story- your way :). I would invest in this product line even if we weren't adopting but we believe God will use this to help with ourr funding of the adoption and to save money for our son's higher education since we are paying for two others to be in college right now :) Thanks for all your prayers and support.

Two Posts in One Day :)

Our presentation was amazing for us and we are so humbled by God's grace and mercy. We were so blessed by God's miracles to us. First a contact with the State Dept. of Social Services who hooked us up with info about a tax credit and then told us he works with post placement adoption issues and offered his support and help when we return from Ukraine. Then a young lady who speaks Russian is in our congregation, we have been praying for her for years while she had been on the mission field, and then a wonderful friend who said they knew no less then 8 people in Kyiv, who she can hook us up with. We at least knew one or two in Odessa, but no one in Kyiv so we are so grateful to God for opening more doors and we plan to walk through all that He opens for us.

Our presentation...

Today at church we will formally introduce our plans. One of our elders and close family friend is the speaker today and he has planned for us to be part of his message. He feels what we are doing is so important, that we were moved from the announcement time to the main message. He is an awesome speaker and teacher we are so huumble by he and many others in our congregation who are coming alongside of us. We are so humbled by the wonderful people we have met virtually and who are fast becoming such an important part of our lives. Mike laughs because I wake, turn on the computer and pull up our blogspot and check on everyone who we are or have been following. What a blessing God gives to us to send us with very special pilgrims to a land He has called us to, so we may love one of His own. Having studied a lot of Ukrainian history recently I realize their geography has caused their country and peoples great pain over their history. They are in the center of Europe and their land has been used as a war zone for many battles amongst European powers almost since their beginning. Right now Russia is playing with their energy sources and who knows how long it will be before they are involved in another conflict. Ukrainians are a hearty people who love laughter, and love their heritage, they have withstood many hardships under foreign rule losing some 1.5 million of their Jewish population and 6.5 million countrymen in WWII alone. Communism is still lurking near and it is a constant threat to this people group who seek to farm and enjoy their own diverse culture. They are not Russian though they have been called 'little Russia'. We wish with our adoption to allow our new child to draw strength from the heritage of this hardworking fun loving group who have withstood famine, war, suppression and many hardships. We have learned so much so far. I love their flag, when I first saw it, it was plain to me sky blue top and golden yellow bottom; that is all that their flag is made up of, but as I did the research their flag stands for their clear blue skies and golden wheat fields, for in their rich soil they produce the wheat for many, they are the bread basket for much of Europe. Bread, the sustinence for life. We hope to share our bread with at least one young Ukrainian man, the bread that comes from our Father in heaven, the bread of life. and at the same time we hope this young man will bring to our family the seasoning from his rich heritage to add more flavor to our life and to allow us to develop a God like compassion for another people group. What a blessing it is to add flavoring to our meal so much more so is it to add flavor to our lives. For meeting, knowing and sharing this journey with as many of God's people as possible is the best banquet this side of heaven. Taste and see for our Mighty Savior and Lord is GOOD. If you have a desire to serve reach out and grab a new spice in your life, God has an unbelievable banquet prepared when we seek to embrace His orphans and widows, His children that are lost or in need, step out in faith and open you hearts to the rich bounty He lays before you, you will never regret the experience if you draw close to Him for the journey He has planned for you.

Our Homestudy is....

FINISHED!!!!!! Oh what a feeling and what a surprise, we were told Wednesday at the earliest, but God had other plans and we were ecstatic to get it after I returned from my Digital Scrapbooking convention this afternoon. On to the dossier as this gets sent to its next destination hopefully on Monday :) Keep praying for our little paper trail. By the way Happy Valentines Day

Checked off another thing today!!!

We had our second home study visit today so we are done with that all our paperwork is now complete and we should have our final paperwork complete by hopefully Wednesday next week. It is almost behind us. We began handing over our documents for the dossier, our homestudy agency has agreed to do our dossier also and to be our problem solvers here if we get over to Ukraine and have one. I pray we don't but we are happy to have plan B in place for us. Our apraisal came through today and just in time I had one half hour to finish our financial worksheet for our homestudy before we left, thanks for the prayers. God is always good and in His time. We are close to having all of our dossier documents that we can get ourselves we hope to have all of it by the second week in March that takes a God thing but we are sure our God can accomplish that. We have now begun a list of books and Ukrainian authors that we want to purchase for our homeschooling and we have begun our Russian language studies; they have been interesting especially listening to Mike try to do them with his southern accent. :) We are moving along in full faith this is what God has called us to, and that He is working out all the details. Just pray I don't forget to do what He needs me to do when He needs me to do it. I keep trying to second guess what I have done. Our next thing is to close this week on our refinance and to get our funding together. God knows we went into this knowing the financial would be His miracle to perform and He has met the needs so far and we know He will do the rest. Help us to stay focused on Him so we can see what He is doing and not get in His way.

Please Pray :)

We are in the process of refinancing our home and finishing our homestudy, one is contingent upon the other. Our appraisal is in the middle of this paperwork and needs to be finished so we can have the most updated financial statement possible. The appraisers step mother passed away and our appraisal was not complete at the time. First, please lift up his family that God would comfort them and give them peace through this time. Next pray for a miracle that we can get our appraisal somehow. We are supposed to go to closing on Monday and all of this is now up in the air. We surely did not forsee this snag in the trail. Please pray for God to give us peace during this time and for Him to give us clear direction also. Thanks for being there for us.

Another hurdle passes by...

I am exhausted. This week has been, all about hurry up and wait as we climbed the hill to the next major step, the homevisit. Yesterday afternoon I picked up the last required legal document for the homestudy packet. We have reference letters to check on and we need to finish our 10 hours of training, by Thursday. Our second home visit is Thursday and we hope to have our draft ready by then :). The process today was really interesting to us. Our boys had come home and were asked how they felt about it and our oldest was reserved as usual but said it was good to him and our youngest expressed "I think this is so cool!" We had hoped they could get home to give some insight to our home study agent on the wonderful sons we have been blessed with thus far and to show their support for the process. God is so good! Then it was like cramming your life into 2 hours time. It was sweet and encouraging as we listened to each other talk about our childhoods, our families, our meeting, courtship and marriage. How we raised our children and most of all the deep desire to follow Christ's will for our lives. As we reflected afterwards, we were so blessed to see God's hand in every area of our life.
Our biggest challenge is one relative couple we have yet to tell, one of the two is negative about adoption. They have preconceived ideas on adoption that are negative. Some people have stereotypes of adoption that are unfounded. One is you are adopting other peoples problems, I had two children of my own and they had their share of challenges for us too. No family is perfect and genetics has no call on whether one child is good because he/she is your biological child or is bad because they are adopted. Love takes risks, every type of love has a risk to it, has challenges in it, and takes commitment to work together with God's will to make it through the tears and trials, so we will get to the joy and blessings. We can only step out in faith and trust that as long as we are clearly listening to God's voice and direction that he will get us through the valleys and we will reach the high places. We are fast approaching the time when we must tell these special people in our lives our plans. Please pray for open minds and softened hearts. We get the idea that they have been told, by someone, because of negative comments recently made about adoption. Please pray for them, that they would see God's hand in this decision.
Our passports should be in this week and hopefully all our extra legal copies will be here. This next step is all new to us as we begin to put together our dossier. We are on a path that we hope will bring us to Ukraine in May June time frame. God is directing our paths and the encouragement and prayer support is amazing. Still so much left to do and so many unknowns, but "I know I am not, but I know I AM," and whatever He brings us too, he will get us through. I look forward to our day of rest before we begin another packed week. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement, they have brought us much peace.

This is a busy week for our adoption process

We have been running non-stop in this process this week. The appraiser came for the home refinance, as we try to find the funding for our adoption. I have papers to pick up all over town, marriage license copies (3 originals), medical forms, birth certificate for Mike, financial papers... our home visit is on Saturday. We called to see if our boys might be able to be here. We felt the prompting from God to call them. They were raised in our home and can be a good resource for the agency worker to talk to about growing up in our home. Mike has to be out of town a lot this week so he is stressed about us having everything together by Saturday, but I trust God will get it all together for us. Also we asked several special friends if they would be references for us and so we have that process taking place. I will contact our facilitator tomorrow and start gathering what he needs from us.
I was supposed to join Mike on a business trip the end of the month and now need to make the decision as to whether I go or not. Our sons band has its first large official concert at the Performing Arts Center on his college campus and they hope to release their first cd then. So I have to decide what I will do with that as soon as possible. We have scouts tonight and I have a trip coming up soon with them that I need to get organized. And we have several books on Ukraine that I need to finish reading and get turned into the library, 2 I plan to order for our trip. We were thinking this was dragging, but God knew we would need the down time before the race :) We love and appreciate all of you who are lifting our son up in your prayers as well as us in this process, we feel encouraged and uplifted. Thanks.

Abundant Joy!

I could not believe the day we had today, God is moving so precisely. At 8:30 the doorbell rang, I could not imagine who it was and it was UPS with my birth certificate, I could have kissed that guy. Would have shocked him; as it was I closed the door and did a happy dance :). 9:00 the phone rang and it was the appraiser for our refinance. He will be here Monday. You can pray it appraises for what we need to have to help out with some adoption costs. We are just listening to God and so far he has been faithful. I had lunch with a dear friend and then ran to the Scout office to finish up Eagle paperwork for one of my Scouts, we are almost finished with his final write up before his board of review. Hopefully his board will be soon so I won't be in the Ukraine during it, I don't see that as a problem yet. Then picked up an Xray, our son Michael has to have his wisdom teeth out over spring break and that all fell into place. Then I ran home and was so thrilled to realize we had been blessed with the money to expedite our home study...the exact amount needed to do so. That will mean our home study can be done in three weeks. I will have to change the budget sheet when the refinance is complete but they assured me that will not be a problem. So I went to the post office and watched the gentleman behind the counter weigh it and figure everything up for us and when he said thank you I just got goose bumps, Godspeed I said as I left the counter and did another happy dance when I got home. Considering over the last two weeks we have had some spiritual warfare taking place with the freezer dying and losing 75% of our food supply that I had put up last summer, then the range went. But in the long run the stove was 32 years old and the freezer 20. But now the kitchen has a new range we found on clearance for half price and a new energy efficient fridge. We know the freezer went but the fridge is 19 years old and we figured it might give up in sympathy to the other two appliances so we prayed and replaced the fridge and will get a store rebate that will almost completely cover the cost of a new freezer latter on. So we get our passports done tomorrow since I have two birth certificates one for homestudy and one for passport :). I will work next week on the other dossier paperwork and hopefully have it almost all together by the time the home study is complete and the DSS review is done. Then we can get that package translated. Our goal when we started was to be in Ukraine the end of May early June, we pray that works out. That is our goal. When we filed we were told 8 months to a year, June is 8 months. So we are abundantly grateful to our Father who is about His business. And we were blessed by one of the blogs that we keep up with, not that we aren't blessed by all of them as we see God working, but this one touched me so deeply. To be so burdened for these children that you get up and pray for each one in the middle of the night, I was covered in goose bumps again claiming those prayers and knowing God will honor them. And yet we will never know all of how that is honored but they will be. And some of you reading this may be the beginning of a journey for you to a foreign land to save a child and love Gods orphans. I am filled with abundant joy for all the Father does for His children. God be with those who are called to answer the prayers of a faithful yet burdened servant of our mighty Father.

Where two or more are gathered in my name...

there am I in their midst. A promise so we ask you to join us in our prayer. Awesome Father, who knows the plan that you have for us, we ask you to guard our steps and move them to your timing. We pray that we will remember that you move before us and take care of the financial aspects of this venture you have called us to. We thank you for the ability to get our home study expedited and pray it will be finished in 3 weeks as promised. We pray for speedy and accurate processing of all the paperwork that has left our hands this week. Many loose ends are out there and we know you are with each one, guard the papers and let the most efficient handle them so they will be the way they need to be orchestrated for our adoption. We praise you Lord for your grace and mercy in our lives and the tremendous blessings you bring our way when we choose to follow your will. We ask you to bless the hands that will work at every step of this process and that you would guard them and protect them. May our faithfulness in this process show them who you are so they will seek your face, if they do not know you and Father if they do bless them abundantly for their ministry to these special children of yours. Please guard and protect our son and give him good health. Help the Christian Gentleman who wishes to share with him be able to. Convict our son to be responsible to others and show him there are people who love him because you first loved us. We praise you in how quickly things have fallen together though they seem to drag at times, when we seek to control their outcome. But Father every delay has brought us an extra blessing and every time a financial requirement is needed you have met it. Prepare our hearts to love the unlovable we might see on this journey and to not be so busy that we do not pray for each person we come in touch with. You have our son in your hands and have. You know him and love him more than we ever could but as we follow You to him use us to bring others to Yourself in this path you have us on. I pray Lord for a chance to be a light to those who treat the children without grace, love and mercy. Please Lord begin to heal our sons heart through Christians who already are there reaching out to him. Prepare us for what we will need in our toolbox to help him know you. Father you have promised us you will return what the locusts have eaten and we stand on that Word of knowledge faithfully to see how you will transform our son into a man after your heart. Help me to remember all you have been teaching me and showing me so I may be your hands in the life of this child of yours. I thank you Father that you believe we can carry out part of your plan for him. Keep us humble in that journey, keep us quiet to hear, give us your strength to unconditionally love those we may see hurt these children, because Lord I am not strong enough to love those who hurt others without you, especially children. I need you Lord. Bless our journey and Lord be with the many that are on this journey for you, give them peace for the trials and grace for the moment, and unconditional love for the people they will see. I thank you Father for answered prayer before I know your answer or understand your timing. I Love you Father and thank you for the love, grace and mercy you have just for me. Amen

What a difference a day makes...

A day makes a great deal of difference in God's creation. It is His perfect timing that brings things to fruition. We have heard from a potential facilitator, I mired through the list of papers I have to have and found the one with a lot of needed info on it, it was filed incorrectly. I have to order an extra or two of my birth certificate since that is needed a zillion times over by everyone. Today and tomorrow are total paperwork days. We also have some things we have to do that were recommended by a friend who is a financial planner and donated his time to us to help us get a handle on the financial end of things. Our freezer that had died last week is now on the to be replaced list for the summer when the garden comes in. That was a whole nightmare in and of itself. To grow a garden is a lot of work and to see it almost all destroyed by a freezer that quit working was hard. But God has been faithful to us every step of the way.
The thing that would have helped us the most was a list of what to do in what order. We knew we needed to file the I600A and I600, but then we faced a huge list and no idea what order. Our biggest challenge has been our birth certificate issues, which are required for two parts of this process at the same time. So after someone files their I 600 our recommendation is to get certified copies of your birth certificates (2-3). You have to send them for your passport application and you have to have them for your homestudy. You need to do your passport quickly as you have to have it for your dossier. Find your facilitator early and get your homestudy going. We did our medicals early and will probably have to redo them, but we had our regular physicals schedules so we did them. Maybe we will be lucky and be finished quickly who knows, I hate the thought of having to take the syphllis and Aids tests again. If someone knows of a good checklist for what to do in what order, we would love to find that. It would really have helped in the birth certificate frustrations. Mike's is not bad he can run into town and pick up a certified copy, me I have to order mine from New York and wait on it. I am tempted to make the drive just to get it done quickly, but 15 hours to Albany this time of year...not a pleasant thought. God is so good in His timing. I will trust Him. He may just have to knock a little harder to make it clear to this confused follower as to what I should be doing in His plan next :)

God is not the God of Confusion...

Then why do I feel out to sea right now. We have our homestudy paperwork complete, now for the homestudy, and have conversed with our agency who will do that. We are trying to get a handle on exactly what goes in this dossier. We have our medicals, I have the last tax return and this years W-2, I have our marriage license and our birth certificates, which I will not have when they go with our passport application this week..., I need a criminal check but who does that? We need to contact our facilitator and pray everything is complete by yesterday since the young man we would like to adopt ages out, in October. Everything has a cost and though we have been some blessed sometimes we just don't have the money for the next stage. We have our home study money but our passports are in limbo, since we had to purchase the boys textbooks for this semester :) I can relate to the hamster in the wheel at this time. I am tired and overwhelmed and wonder if I can get it all done. Where do we go to get this on the fast track? On our knees again...