The Homestudy is finally on it's way!

I recieved an email from our homestudy agency stating that they were putting our home study in the mail today. Finally! I have everything that I need for our dossier, except for our homestudy. We began our homestudy back in Janurary. To be honest, I have no idea why it has taken this long. We have turned everything in within days of being asked. The only explanation that I can come up with for our lengthy home study time is the Lord's timing. At this point, I don't care how long that it has taken all I care about is it is on it's way and that puts us a step closer to bringing home our baby/babies. Praise God it is on it's way!

Church BBQ

This past Saturday our chuch had a BBQ plate sale as a fundraiser to help us raise money for our adoption. Words cannot express our gratitude towards everyone who helped make this fundraiser the success that it was. We are truly blessed with an amazing church family. We are so touched by their love, support and dedication in helping us to bring home our baby/babies. We can't thank everyone enough for giving up your weekend to come out and help us try to raise money for our adoption. Also, a big thanks goes out to everyone that sold tickets, bought tickes and helped promote the fundraiser. I truly hate to call names because I am so scared that I am going to forget someone. However, I want to specially thank those that worked so hard: Benton and Ruthie: You guys made this happen. Thank you for getting the BBQ together. You are two of the most amazing people that I have ever met and we are so blessed to have you in our lives. A big thanks to my parents who played a big part in this fundraiser also. You guys have been at everything and worked so hard to help with every fundraiser that we have had. Eddie, Patti, Gayle, Addison, Julianne, Tina, Myrtle, Hal, Angela, Byron, Trina, Carl, Pam, Bob, Danette, Terrie T, Tim and Lora...thank you guys so much for everything. You will always hold a special place in our hearts for all that you did to help with this BBQ. To Shasha, Erin, Mema, Papa, and Mickey: thanks for coming up. Your support means so much to us and we love you.

Getting Closer..

Kristen (our adoption coordinator) called today to review all of the documents that I sent to her. There were several minor things that needed to be changed or updated. I spent a good portion of the day getting as much as I could fixed. There are very few things left to do at this point, and everything left has to come from the home study agency (which I'm confident that the new company will be quick in getting me the things that I need). Kristen informed me that we were really close to submitting our dossier, we just have one major thing to figure out. As many on here may know, Benji was a twin (his twin sister died at 8 months old). He, as well as myself, have always had a heart for twins. So we are at a point to where we must decided wether to register for one child or two. It is really a huge decision for us. So in the next couple of days, we must decide for our registration forms. We are trusting that God will lead us in the direction that he is calling us. We are really aiming to have everything sent off and hopefully be registered to a region in Russia within the next month to month in a half. I have been so excited all day. I feel like we are finally going somewhere. We have spent the last 5 months working on our home study and preparing our dossier (which I truly thought would take less than 3 months). The longer that it took and the more speed bumps that we hit, the more I was becoming discouraged. Today, I was very encouraged. I got the boost that I desperately needed...praise God!

Home Study Complete!

I just recieved a call from our new home study agency. They have finally recieved a copy of our homestudy from the previous agency. It has now been completed by the new agency as well as all of the other paperwork that we needed from them for our dossier and it has been emailed to me. I have forwarded it to Kristen (our adoption coordinater) for review. Once Kristen approves it we will be ready to get everything apostilled and then sent to Russia! The money is still a pretty big issue but we completely trust that the Lord is already making the preparations for the money to be in place when the time is right. I'm just so excited that we can move forward now.

More Progress..

We went to Atlanta Friday to get fingerprinted (biometrics as they call it) for USCIS. We were in and out in minutes...nothing to it. That's one more step in the right diretion. We are still waiting to get our homestudy finilized. It is seeming to take forever for the homestudy to get completed. It has been finished for a few weeks but getting the two companies to finalize it has not been an easy task. I sure don't want to complain because both agencies have been wonderful to us; but we can't even apply for financial grants nor submit our dossier to Russia until the homestudy is comeplete. I know that everything will happen in God's timing, and I'm okay with that. I know that this process is more than likely going to be a little long. Sometimes the human nature kicks in and it feels that it is never going to happen.

More progress

A big hooray: Benji's passport finally came in today. That is the last thing that we were lacking (from what we can do) to complete our dossier. We have an appointment with Homeland security to get our biometrics done, for this Friday. We were really hoping to have everything completed so that while we are in Atlanta we could get everything apostilled then we'd be ready to submit our dossier to Russia for translation. However, there are a few things that are beyond our control that just have not fallen into place. We are still hoping that we can get everything done, but it's looking like we may just have to take another trip to Atlanta later to get documents apostilled.