Well, It seems that it is quite easy to end up on a Russian blacklist. Our social worker has had her home study agency name recently put there. :-( An adoption agency she contracted for, (who will remain nameless), did not fulfill their obligation to send in post placement paperwork in a timely manner resulting in, yes, you guessed it. Blacklisted. So, even though she had done her part and turned it in to that adoption agency on time the hammer, it seems, crashes down catching everyone in it's path. Guilty by association. Now this adoption agency is out of business and our social worker has had to make new copies of her post placement paperwork, have it translated, and send on to Russia in hopes of having her own home study agency name removed from the blacklist by the time the new one comes out in 4 months.
In the meantime we have had to have our home study rewritten by a different home study agency. I hope that they get the work done and back to us quickly.
Sound confusing? Well, you get used to it. :-)
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Falling. Crashing. Moving forward...
No, I have not deserted this blog; nor have I moved to a mountain top where there is no internet service. What has happened to keep me away so long after leaving you with the nothing that I left you with in September? Well, it appears that yet another country is contemplating their agreement with the US to continue adoptions. Yes, the country of Ukraine is considering closing it's doors until a time that the United States has signed a bilateral agreement with them. Quite possibly they may consider joining the Hague Convention. These agreements could be written quickly and without much effort if the countries in question were considering the children who are waiting for a family to love them and take them home. Unfortunately for those children it is not to be. At least not quickly. I do not even think that those with political power ever stop to think of those ones they say that they are trying to help. No, I don't think that there is even the slightest mention of them as the talk of "adoption suspension" echos in the air. My prayer is that the people with the power would have their hearts softened and that they would do what is best for all of the children. Find them homes...
Where does that leave us you ask? Looking to Russia. Again we refiled our paperwork, this time Russia is our desired country. This time there is also a picture in our hearts. She is a lovely 2 1/2-year-old blue-eyed blonde haired beautiful little girl. She lives in a baby house in Vladivostok. Our paperwork has been flying together for trip 1 and coming along fine until we made contact with another brick wall. Due to an adoption agency, who is no longer in business, not filing their post placement papers timely our social workers agency was put on the Russian blacklist. What this means for us is that either we use a different home study agency who is not on said blacklist or we wait 3-4 months to see if our social workers agency is taken off of the blacklist after she refiles the "missing" paperwork.
We decided to use a different agency for out home study. Our social worker is in the process of trying to contact another for us to use.
And we wait...
Where does that leave us you ask? Looking to Russia. Again we refiled our paperwork, this time Russia is our desired country. This time there is also a picture in our hearts. She is a lovely 2 1/2-year-old blue-eyed blonde haired beautiful little girl. She lives in a baby house in Vladivostok. Our paperwork has been flying together for trip 1 and coming along fine until we made contact with another brick wall. Due to an adoption agency, who is no longer in business, not filing their post placement papers timely our social workers agency was put on the Russian blacklist. What this means for us is that either we use a different home study agency who is not on said blacklist or we wait 3-4 months to see if our social workers agency is taken off of the blacklist after she refiles the "missing" paperwork.
We decided to use a different agency for out home study. Our social worker is in the process of trying to contact another for us to use.
And we wait...
No news is good news?
I prefer to think of it as just well, "no news".
We are waiting once again.
When someone begins the process of adoption I think they should be told, "Be prepared to work and wait... then work and wait... then work and ...yes, wait again. I shouldn't complain much though, our caseworker, Alla, said that the Ukraine has decided to allow us to send a sort of pre-adoption letter. An appeal letter if you will. In it we must state if we are looking for a boy or a girl, preferred age, and list specifically what special needs we feel capable of caring for. I am very grateful for this and when I ask myself why? I answer, because it is giving me something to do! :-) I wrote the letter and sent it to Alla to proof read. She approved and I off to Austin for apostiling. It came back stamped and ready on Friday but Alla wasn't in to give me the specific address she wanted me to send it to... Adoption Ark is based in St. Louis and has offices in California as well. So I blasted home from our co-op class yesterday and searched my email greedily for an answering address. Within a minute and a half I had a label printed and taped to the envelope, grabbed Jeremiah and headed to our nearest Fed-Ex drop off point. Jeremiah placed it in the capable hands of someone who assured him the package would get sent off and there you have it. My letter appealing to the country of Ukraine to help us find our daughter has been sent to Alla in California for her to proof and send to someone I have never met and probably will never meet. Someone who I pray God will grant me favor with and who will have mercy on us and begin to search their data base to find her. I'd like to hear back from someone well... next week. *Big sigh*...did I mention that at the moment I am struggling with patience?
Jeff always says "labor equals value", I value her even now. I know that God is with us. I know that He is with her.
Blessings
We are waiting once again.
When someone begins the process of adoption I think they should be told, "Be prepared to work and wait... then work and wait... then work and ...yes, wait again. I shouldn't complain much though, our caseworker, Alla, said that the Ukraine has decided to allow us to send a sort of pre-adoption letter. An appeal letter if you will. In it we must state if we are looking for a boy or a girl, preferred age, and list specifically what special needs we feel capable of caring for. I am very grateful for this and when I ask myself why? I answer, because it is giving me something to do! :-) I wrote the letter and sent it to Alla to proof read. She approved and I off to Austin for apostiling. It came back stamped and ready on Friday but Alla wasn't in to give me the specific address she wanted me to send it to... Adoption Ark is based in St. Louis and has offices in California as well. So I blasted home from our co-op class yesterday and searched my email greedily for an answering address. Within a minute and a half I had a label printed and taped to the envelope, grabbed Jeremiah and headed to our nearest Fed-Ex drop off point. Jeremiah placed it in the capable hands of someone who assured him the package would get sent off and there you have it. My letter appealing to the country of Ukraine to help us find our daughter has been sent to Alla in California for her to proof and send to someone I have never met and probably will never meet. Someone who I pray God will grant me favor with and who will have mercy on us and begin to search their data base to find her. I'd like to hear back from someone well... next week. *Big sigh*...did I mention that at the moment I am struggling with patience?
Jeff always says "labor equals value", I value her even now. I know that God is with us. I know that He is with her.
Blessings
Patience...
Patience is a strange word. The definition of patience is:
Without agitation, uneasiness or discontent. :-(
Without agitation, uneasiness or discontent. :-(
Ups, downs and back ups...
After many months touring the bottom we are again climbing to the top of our adoption rollercoaster, I hope. Let me begin again. Our ride on this coaster began in August 2009 as I stated in my last post. We researched and chose the country of Kazakhstan to adopt from. We were all excited and began the paperwork with much zeal. The paperwork came and it went...and it came and it went...and it, well, you get my meaning. We had a homestudy done by an awesome lady who has answered many questions from me even to this day, we had psych evaluations done by a psych dr. in another town close to where we live, no, we didn't by-pass our own town for the reasons you are thinking, there simply wasn't a Dr. where we live with the correct license to perform the correct tests...really. Ink blot Dr.s are not in every town :-), we went for fingerprinting in Dallas, FBI checks for background, for clearance for all manner of things I'd never heard of, filed for immigration papers, got recent copies of our birth certificates, marriage licenses, mortgage info, blood types... well maybe not blood types but wow, I think our dossier contains more information about me than I know about me.
*These are some of the required things you must do to adopt overseas so we did them* It's not much different from doing the many things you must do when you are carrying a baby within you.
It took many many months to get everything together and then had to send it to be apostilled by the Secretary of the State.
Done. Whew!
Ok, so now we have everything we need, our copies are made and we are set to turn our documents in!!
Happiness!, I'm up at the top right?
Now comes the waiting stage where we wait and hopefully soon get an invitation to come to Kaz and meet our daughter. This is what we've worked so hard for right? Well maybe not? As I said before, adoption waiting truly isn't that much different from having your own child, the months of gathering paperwork is like pregnancy, with the exception of having another country looking over your shoulder. They do this because they want to be sure that you are doing right by the child you claimed as your own from their country, after all you did promised to love and care for him/her until you die. I might add that they don't look favorable when the media reports that in the United States a "mom" beats her newly adopted daughter "from China" to death, and a "family" put their 7 year old son they have had for 8 months back on a plane to Russia, (unaccompanied), returning him because he has anger issues.
I believe that the point when you finally take that child in your arms is the point of the "adoption birth". We have labored, yes, labored over paperwork, and finances and all kinds of things that try to wear us down. Now this... this little face looking up at us. Those eyes that want to trust, want love. Here it is. Our son or daughter!
We have given birth ( yes in a different way, in a courthouse instead of a hospital,but still birth)
Just as in utero we don't get to pick a personality, perfection in the physical, and many things that we would like to have control over but don't... so it is with adoption. This person we hold now, that we worked so hard for, cried many tears over (before we even had a face for those tears). He/she has a mind of his/her own. It isn't like picking out a puppy! We are having/had a baby. Our baby.
I have 4 biological children they are all uniquely different. uniquely special, incredibly loved by Jeff and I. Because we want another we must adopt. All these month of waiting for paperwork came to an end. We were at "month 9". Sigh ..but as we bundled up our paperwork to send in I received a phone call. "Wait", she said, Kaz has decided to join the "Hague Convention", a group that oversees adoptions, because of the bad publicity from parents who choose not to do the right thing they will put themselves under the umbrella of this convention hoping that some of the people will be weeded out who really don't want or have the ability to care for a child, they just need a puppy.
Stunned we wait until September. That is the month they feel they will be ready to accept dossiers again. Mounds of paperwork on our desk. Many tears shed. I waited patiently, well almost patiently. But is now September, I'm told that they haven't even filed the paperwork yet.
So many children sit in baby houses and orphanages who are waiting for someone to come to them and say "you are my child. I choose you". Does anyone care? Will no one help these children with no one to love them, is there no one to say, it's going to be ok, is there no one they can trust? Why haven't the Hague papers been filed?! Many questions. No answers.
I am told now since we are willing to have a daughter with a special need that we might be able to cut through some of the waiting. Now why didn't I know this before? I asked all along for a daughter with special needs. I filled out the special needs paperwork and our family talked about this in great detail. Here we are 1 year later waiting and we find that there are a few countries willing to have us come and search for our little girl. I have many questions but I don't think I'll find my answers here or anywhere else for that matter. I am very excited once again. I am so ready for this to happen. I feel like I've been pregnant for 13 months... wait... I guess I have. :-)
As I read back over this post I see a lot of randomness. Hmmm, is that a word? Bethany, you were right I should have started this at the beginning, I do have something to say. lol Thanks for setting it up now.
God is in control. I am so happy that we have a road (or 3 or 4, it seems) to choose from. I know that she is out there. She is waiting to hear my voice. Jeff's voice. Waiting for us to say "I love you so much". "I searched for you". "I traveled through countries to find you". "You have brothers and sisters who have waited and loved you before they knew you" "You are mine"... So again I will make my plans and trust that God directs the steps of our family each and every day as we begin once again to ascend on this, our adoption rollercoaster, praying all the while... Please let us ascend...Please let us find her...
*These are some of the required things you must do to adopt overseas so we did them* It's not much different from doing the many things you must do when you are carrying a baby within you.
It took many many months to get everything together and then had to send it to be apostilled by the Secretary of the State.
Done. Whew!
Ok, so now we have everything we need, our copies are made and we are set to turn our documents in!!
Happiness!, I'm up at the top right?
Now comes the waiting stage where we wait and hopefully soon get an invitation to come to Kaz and meet our daughter. This is what we've worked so hard for right? Well maybe not? As I said before, adoption waiting truly isn't that much different from having your own child, the months of gathering paperwork is like pregnancy, with the exception of having another country looking over your shoulder. They do this because they want to be sure that you are doing right by the child you claimed as your own from their country, after all you did promised to love and care for him/her until you die. I might add that they don't look favorable when the media reports that in the United States a "mom" beats her newly adopted daughter "from China" to death, and a "family" put their 7 year old son they have had for 8 months back on a plane to Russia, (unaccompanied), returning him because he has anger issues.
I believe that the point when you finally take that child in your arms is the point of the "adoption birth". We have labored, yes, labored over paperwork, and finances and all kinds of things that try to wear us down. Now this... this little face looking up at us. Those eyes that want to trust, want love. Here it is. Our son or daughter!
We have given birth ( yes in a different way, in a courthouse instead of a hospital,but still birth)
Just as in utero we don't get to pick a personality, perfection in the physical, and many things that we would like to have control over but don't... so it is with adoption. This person we hold now, that we worked so hard for, cried many tears over (before we even had a face for those tears). He/she has a mind of his/her own. It isn't like picking out a puppy! We are having/had a baby. Our baby.
I have 4 biological children they are all uniquely different. uniquely special, incredibly loved by Jeff and I. Because we want another we must adopt. All these month of waiting for paperwork came to an end. We were at "month 9". Sigh ..but as we bundled up our paperwork to send in I received a phone call. "Wait", she said, Kaz has decided to join the "Hague Convention", a group that oversees adoptions, because of the bad publicity from parents who choose not to do the right thing they will put themselves under the umbrella of this convention hoping that some of the people will be weeded out who really don't want or have the ability to care for a child, they just need a puppy.
Stunned we wait until September. That is the month they feel they will be ready to accept dossiers again. Mounds of paperwork on our desk. Many tears shed. I waited patiently, well almost patiently. But is now September, I'm told that they haven't even filed the paperwork yet.
So many children sit in baby houses and orphanages who are waiting for someone to come to them and say "you are my child. I choose you". Does anyone care? Will no one help these children with no one to love them, is there no one to say, it's going to be ok, is there no one they can trust? Why haven't the Hague papers been filed?! Many questions. No answers.
I am told now since we are willing to have a daughter with a special need that we might be able to cut through some of the waiting. Now why didn't I know this before? I asked all along for a daughter with special needs. I filled out the special needs paperwork and our family talked about this in great detail. Here we are 1 year later waiting and we find that there are a few countries willing to have us come and search for our little girl. I have many questions but I don't think I'll find my answers here or anywhere else for that matter. I am very excited once again. I am so ready for this to happen. I feel like I've been pregnant for 13 months... wait... I guess I have. :-)
As I read back over this post I see a lot of randomness. Hmmm, is that a word? Bethany, you were right I should have started this at the beginning, I do have something to say. lol Thanks for setting it up now.
God is in control. I am so happy that we have a road (or 3 or 4, it seems) to choose from. I know that she is out there. She is waiting to hear my voice. Jeff's voice. Waiting for us to say "I love you so much". "I searched for you". "I traveled through countries to find you". "You have brothers and sisters who have waited and loved you before they knew you" "You are mine"... So again I will make my plans and trust that God directs the steps of our family each and every day as we begin once again to ascend on this, our adoption rollercoaster, praying all the while... Please let us ascend...Please let us find her...
Our Journey Began
(transferred from another site)
August of 2009 we signed our official contract to adopt. It hasn't been an easy road but I am still believing that God has a sweet, precious little girl for us somewhere. I do believe it, I do, I do, I do! Hence the reason for this blog. Speaking it out helps me to keep my focus where it should be. Finding her. This blog is a place where I can focus on the daughter I am at the moment only dreaming of...
August of 2009 we signed our official contract to adopt. It hasn't been an easy road but I am still believing that God has a sweet, precious little girl for us somewhere. I do believe it, I do, I do, I do! Hence the reason for this blog. Speaking it out helps me to keep my focus where it should be. Finding her. This blog is a place where I can focus on the daughter I am at the moment only dreaming of...
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