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...