Almost finished with the home study...

The process has continued to progress, and we really are almost finished with our home study. We met with our social worker twice last weekend, and both visits went very well. This social worker is a wonderful woman who truly cares about the children who are being adopted, and she couldn't have been any kinder or more encouraging. It is always a treat to see her. Greg and Matthias have already had their medical visits, and their forms are filled out. My visit is today, and the other three children have appointments for Wednesday. We replaced the fire extinguisher and took down the old smoke detector, so as soon as we can get the fire inspector back to our house, our fire inspection will be done. Our background checks and Child Abuse Clearances are in process, and we are just waiting for results on those. We even got both employment letters, so we are praising God for that. As I mentioned before, mine tends to be more complicated because I am self-employed, but we did find a CPA who was willing to write it, and that step is done now.

In our last update, we shared that our Agency Fee was due at this time, and that we owed them nearly $7000. We still do not have the money to pay that, and we are feeling a bit discouraged. The agency has been very kind, and they have agreed to break the fee into two parts. We can pay $3300 now, and the rest of it when we submit our dossier. This is helpful, but we don't have enough money for even this part of the fee. The agency will not be able to approve our home study until we pay this fee, so if we don't have the money that we need by the time our social worker is done writing our narrative, Isabelle's adoption will be completely halted while we wait for that money to come in. Our prayer from the beginning has been that God will not allow her adoption to be delayed even a single day because of lack of funds, and up until this point, He has answered that prayer. We know that He can still send the money that we need in time for her process to continue without delay, but He will have to send it quickly. That is still our prayer. We cannot proceed with immigration approval, dossier submission, or grant applications until we have the home study. That piece is key for everything that comes later in the process. Please join us in praying that God will send this money quickly so that we can continue working to bring Isabelle home. We know that we serve a mighty and loving God, and we are looking forward to watching Him work in this situation.

On a lighter note, Gabriela and Mikaela both have birthdays next month, and we are very excited about that. Mikaela came to us just before her first birthday, and it is hard to believe how much she has changed in two years. At that point, she was a sickly baby who didn't take much interest in anything. Now, she has chosen her own birthday decorations (from three choices) and picked her own birthday meal. It is such a privilege to be a part of her transformation, and we can't wait to watch Isabelle blossom in some of the same ways. Mikaela wants Hello Kitty decorations (I really expected her to pick My Little Pony, but she was emphatic that she preferred Hello Kitty) and hamburgers for dinner. We will make sure that we post some pictures of her celebration.

A quick update

Hello Everyone,

Sorry that it has been so long since our last update. Things have continued to progress, but everything moves more slowly than we would like it to. No Longer Alone, the orphan-awareness event that the Shepherd's Crook Ministries held on June 22, was a huge success, and we were very thankful to have been able to participate in that. Since that point, we have been throwing pretty much all of our time and energy into the home study for Isabelle's adoption. We are finally beginning to see the light at the end of that tunnel. We mailed a big bundle of papers for that this morning, and we had our fire inspection this afternoon. Everything looks good, except that we need a new fire extinguisher, because ours is over a year old, and we have to take down an old smoke detector that no longer works. We will fix those things this weekend, and then the inspector will come back early next week and sign off on our form. Greg and I both have our home study physicals next week as well. Our only big obstacle left with the home study is our employment letters. Greg's will be easy, because my dad writes it, but mine is much more challenging, because I am self-employed. We would appreciate prayers as we try to figure out exactly what to do about that.

Funds have continued to come in for Isabelle's adoption, and we thank and praise God for that. We now have enough money for the home study, and almost everything we need for our USCIS approval. God continues to provide things as we need it. We are hoping to see his abundant provision in this area very soon, as we now need to send around $7000 to our agency. We don't have any idea how He is going to send this money, but we trust Him, and we know that He is good. We would appreciate prayers in this area as well.

Thank you for all of your support and encouragement.

Kristie

Another gift

This will be another short post, but I wanted to let everyone know that we received another gift today, and that we now have all the money that we need for Isabelle's home study. We are thanking and praising God for this, and we will be able to start our home study as soon as we are finished with the orphan awareness event in two days. Please pray that our home study will be completed quickly, and that we will be approved to continue Isabelle's adoption. Thank you all for your support and encouragement.

Kristie

Wonderful news!

Today we found out that China has given us pre-approval to adopt Isabelle. This all by itself would have been enough to make today wonderful, but about half an hour after we got the news about the pre-approval, we found out that we are receiving a very generous financial gift that will cover a large portion of our home study. We are overjoyed and marveling at the goodness of God. Please join us in thanking and praising Him tonight.

We don't have time for a longer update right now, because we are still pretty consumed by the orphan-awareness event that Greg has mentioned here before. The event is one week from tonight, and things are really coming down to the wire. We are all tired from the work we have been putting in, but we are also thrilled with the way that it is coming together and very, very excited about the event. If you are local, or if you can make it to Cincinnati next Friday, then I strongly encourage you to come. Go to www.saynolonger.org for more information and to reserve your seat. We would to have as many of you there as possible.

Kristie

Lesson Learned . . . Again

Throughout Mikaela's adoption, God taught us a lot about what it means to trust Him and to follow Him, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He taught us more about the Gospel, about what it means to be adopted by Him and, in turn, what that shows us about the responsibility and privilege of being an adoptive parent. And, as Mikaela's adoption drew to a close, He taught us to take each day, each step of the process, and pray for it specifically and persistently. Jesus's statement in Matthew 6:34 that each day has enough trouble of its own, and that we therefore ought not worry about the next day, was frequently in the front of our minds. We learned that we could not take even the smallest step for granted, and that lesson was highlighted over and over again in Mikaela's story. Maybe it's because I had finally realized what He was trying to teach us, but our last few days in Ukraine seemed especially full of moments that demanded that we look to God and to God alone for answers. Things that should have been relatively simple, things that we often take for granted—getting Mikaela's passport, taking a train ride back to Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine), making it onto our flights on time, and arriving home with all of our luggage—turned out not to be so simple, after all. We did make it home, obviously, but that's a story for another time. The point is that, somewhere in the past two years, I've let that lesson fade. We all make assumptions about the regularity of life, but my focus on trusting God and God alone for the things that we need has slipped a bit. Already, though, He is recalling to our minds that lesson about taking life one day at a time, and that came to light this past week.

In our last e-mail, we said that our agency expected that it would submit our pre-approval application yesterday. Alas, that did not happen. There was a question with one of the aspects of our application that they needed to verify with us first (it turned out to be a non-issue, just a slight miscommunication), but that means that the process has been delayed again. We are still praying that we will be granted pre-approval for Isabelle's adoption, but now our prayers have backed up a step, so that we are now asking God that our application would be submitted to China as soon as possible. (Just to be clear: we are not frustrated with the agency at all. They were absolutely right to double-check the accuracy of the application, because it would be far worse to submit an inaccurate form to China and to try to correct it later, than it is to wait another day or two at the outset.) Adoption is one of those areas in the Christian life that brings the believer into a place of having to submit fully to God's will, to trust in Him and Him alone for every good thing. That means that nothing can be taken for granted, not even the successful completion and submission of the first bit of paperwork necessary for us to bring home our daughter, the one that God has led us to adopt. It's hard to slow down and pray, painstakingly, over each step in the process, but that is exactly what must be done. There really is no looking forward. The only kind of forward-thinking that seems permitted is the hope that we will soon have Isabelle here in our home with us.

One final note before signing off for the night: The biggest reason that we haven't been sending out e-mails or putting up new blog posts very frequently is that we are in the late stages of planning a big orphan awareness event here in Cincinnati. Kristie's parents founded a non-profit organization, The Shepherd's Crook Orphan Ministry, ten years ago, and I have been working for them for the past four years. In just over two weeks, we are going to hold an event that aims to educate people about the plight of orphans around the world and what they can do about it. The night will be interactive, and we hope that this will be a powerful evening for those who come. You can view an invitation video here, and if you'd like to come, there's a place to register on that same site. Admission is free, but each person coming must register for his/her seat. If you will be in the area on June 22, we'd love to see you there!

~ Greg

Delayed, For Now

When I posted my last entry, I fully expected to have completed the pre-approval application by the end of the day yesterday. That, however, did not happen. I haven't been feeling well since Friday, and yesterday the cold settled in, preventing me from going to church. Kristie managed to go with both of our girls (well, both of our girls at home), but she got quite sick yesterday afternoon. Two of our kids are also manifesting some symptoms of the cold (thankfully not severe), and so today has left us knocked flat again, meaning that we haven't been able to wrap up our paperwork. I still feel the need to finish the papers in short order, and so far our prayer that Isabelle's adoption wouldn't be delayed a single day due to a lack of funds has been answered affirmatively. We just didn't expect to have things delayed because of illness. There's always something, isn't there? I'm hoping that we will feel well enough tomorrow evening to put the finishing touches on this paperwork, but we will have to see what tomorrow holds. As badly as we want to complete the application and submit it, it seems that God has answered our recent prayer for rest by forcing us to stop for a couple of days. Perhaps a good night's sleep tonight will set us up well for tomorrow and Wednesday.


I want to thank everyone for praying for us and for our daughter over these past few days. In spite of the fact that we are still not where we would like to be in this process, we have not been tempted to despair. And thank you to those who have donated to her adoption. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate your generosity, nor how much encouragement that has given us. Thank you, and I pray that you will all enjoy peaceful, restful nights tonight.


~Greg

The First Real Sense of Urgency

We knew when we began Isabelle's adoption that we could only move as quickly as God would provide the money. Each step in the process has fees associated with it, and so we committed to pursue her adoption fully aware that we were following Him by stepping out into the great-somewhat-unknown. I put it that way because it is only somewhat unknown. We don't know how He is planning to provide for Isabelle's adoption (indeed, any time in the past that we have tried to guess where His provision would come from, we have been dead wrong), but we know that He is going to supply the money. Why? Because He has called us to adopt her, and He has shown Himself over and over again throughout history to be the One who keeps His promises. In fact, the Lord has a pattern of asking His people to step out and take the first step, trusting in Him to bring the journey to a successful completion. An older, wiser Christian man whom I met only a few weeks ago made this very point, learning from the account of the Israelites crossing the Jordan River under Joshua's command. They were told that the waters would not part until the priests bearing the ark of the covenant should stand in the river. Then, and only then, would God stop the flow of water and allow His people to cross to the other side on dry land. (Joshua 3:7-13) Many situations in the Christian life mirror this; we are asked to take a step into what seems to be an unknown, crazy, irrational situation, and what He really wants from us is to trust Him to be the firm ground on which we'll walk. And even though we have done this before, it's hard to fight the doubts that assail us daily, begging us to question seriously whether God will follow through with what He has asked us to begin. We can only remind ourselves of His loving faithfulness and ask Him to give us the faith that we need to trust Him completely.


Along those lines, we are now feeling a strong sense of urgency to complete our pre-approval paperwork. Technically, we have another two-and-a-half months before these papers are due, but we don't want to wait that long. Isabelle has a heart condition that has deprived her of fully-oxygenated blood her entire life. Her blood is part-oxygenated, part-deoxygenated, and that means that her little heart has been working overtime since she was born. We don't know exactly how bad her condition is, but it certainly isn't helping her. Moreover, we long to have our daughter home with us. There's a hole in our house right now, an empty bed in her bedroom, an empty seat at our table, that needs to be filled by this little one. She needs to be home with us because this is where she belongs, to put it simply. We are nearly finished with this pre-approval application, and we expect to have it done by the end of the day tomorrow. (FYI, the application for pre-approval will be submitted to the Chinese authorities. If they approve us, then Isabelle will be officially matched with us and we will be allowed to continue her adoption. If they reject us, then we won't be allowed to adopt her. Please pray with us that they will grant our pre-approval request!) The problem with this is that we have only 1/5 of the money needed to submit this application. Rather than wait for the money before completing the paperwork, we feel that we need to complete the papers first, so that we can be ready to submit it as soon as God provides enough money. I don't say this to try to influence anyone to give towards her adoption. I mainly ask that you pray with us and for us, that we would look to God and God alone as the One who will bring our daughter home to us, and that He would work in such a way that not one step of this process will be delayed because of a lack of funds. Right now, that isn't the case because we are not ready to submit for pre-approval. But we hope to be by Monday, and something is going to have to happen between now and then if we are going to be able to send everything in that day.


Thank you for your prayers for us and for our daughter. It means a lot to us to have you all coming alongside us in this incredible journey.

- Greg