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.