Fingerprinting appt!

Today, Sunday, we checked the mail after church. And sitting in the mailbox were our letters from Homeland Security giving us our date to be fingerprinted (Dec. 11) and 3 copies of our homestudy complete with our social worker's license- all notarized and everything!! Why didn't I check it yesterday?!?

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with Laura's mom and step-dad, Larry. It was a nice and slow time. We ate alot of food, played, talked and watched movies. A good time to slow down and to thank God for His many blessings. There was a bit of sadness as we spent a holiday feeling our family is not complete. But look forward to our time with them soon. We are working on our Christmas decorations and hope to get them completed this weekend.

If you haven't been following Randy and Valerie Hall's blog (link to the right), then you should take the time to catch up on it. It is a wonderful story and a true blessing to be a part of it with them from afar. God's hand is seen all through out it. When they were unsure if one of their children was going to say yes to being adopted, their friends joined together and prayed fervently for "Z", their family and all involved. God once again displayed His faithfulness and "Z" accepted them as her family. A great testimony to God's glory being magnified through orphans.

Currently, we are following 4 families in Ukraine as they go through the adoption process.- 2 are friends, 1 a friend of a friend, and the other I know of through blogs. Another friend just received their referral to adopt 2 young brothers from Africa. What a blessing to watch it all unfold. There are more set to go to Ukraine in December and January. We learn so much about the process as we follow others' story.

We are in the waiting game for our paperwork. DHR should have our homestudy and hoping they approve it very soon. We have some questions regarding exactly what Ukraine wants for the dossier (in terms of wording), but we have a great facilitator and know he will guide us in this.

Check that off the list.....

Yesterday, we emailed our homestudy to our facilitator in Ukraine to look over. He emailed this morning with a correction. We sent this info to our social worker. She has made the requested corrections and said she will try to get it out today. YEAH! Now we wait for everyone to hopefully approve our homestudy and then we get our dossier completed and send it over---about a 2-3 month process at most, we hope! Happy Thanksgiving.

Going back a bit....

I got to thinking...some you that are reading this may not know how we have got where we are. So I thought I would back track a little...

Every summer an organization called Hope for Orphans of the World brings a group of orphan children from Ukraine to Birmingham, AL where they stay at Randy and Valerie Hall's home for 3 weeks. It is an amazing time for these kids and for those of us that volunteer during that time. Our family has been involved for several summers. But, this past summer, God stirred our hearts to something different. This year, I volunteered just about everyday. I was there and really got to know these kids. It was wonderful. We really connected with alot of those kids!! David, for the first time, came just about daily after he got off of work and on weekends. When they left, it really was quite emotional for me. I hadn't expected that at all.

We began to pray for guidance and we thought God was drawing us in a particular direction. He was, but in a much grander way than we could imagine. After they left, David began talking to others we had met over the summer. In October, God called him to travel to Ukraine for 13 days, without being part of a "mission group." He wanted to see where and to what God was calling him and our family to do in Ukraine. With a friend in tow, he visited several areas, orphanages, rescue shelters, foster homes and met many wonderful people there. While he was there, he chatted with me online. During one of those chats the subject of adoption came up. I am always on board to talk adoption!

After several chats and calls we decided to go forward and start the process for adopting again from Ukraine. Mind you, David was not in Ukraine to seek info on adoption. As a matter of fact, we pretty much felt that we were being turned away from it. We see now that God was turning us away from one situation and guiding us toward another. We are thrilled about this and very eager to add to our family once again. God is so good and so faithful! Not only do we feel God's love in the beauty of adoption but we are also being led to minister to the needs of all orphans in Ukraine. Praise God for His faithfulness, His wisdom, His sovereignty, His mercy and His grace!!

The Journey Begins...

David is home and we are all excited about ministering to the orphans in Ukraine. God has placed an incredible opportunity in our lives and we want to respond and live in obedience to Him. We have no idea what it will look like or how it will happen. But God has opened many doors, built relationships and created many ideas. We hope to lead a mission trip this summer or early fall, at the latest. We are trying to be patient. We want to go NOW, but we want God's perfect timing more than our fleshly desires.

We have also started the process to adopt again!! Of course, we want to adopt from Ukraine. We are very excited and so are the boys. We are waiting on our homestudy to be completed. We hope to send our dossier off to Ukraine in February. That seems like such a long time away, but there is much waiting that must be done on the American side of things. Then we get to wait on the Ukrainian side of things. Much more difficult to do, I believe.

It is so awesome to be in this place of total abandonment. We don't know what tomorrow holds, but we do know that we serve an awesome and sovereign God and our trust and hope is in Him alone. As we move along in this journey, we will blog about it. It is our hope that you will see Christ working and being glorified through orphans of all nations.

A New Day

David returns from Ukraine tomorrow night. After 13 days without him, we are all excited to see him. Can't wait to hear about his amazing adventures with the kids in Ukraine and about how God is revealing His plan to David.