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.