Homestudy update

Completing our homestudy has been quite a challenge.  Although all of our home visits were finished last month, we were still awaiting approval of our homestudy.  The final piece of paper that was missing was the child abuse clearance from Hawaii.  It is a requirement to have a child abuse clearance from every state we have lived in since we were 18.  Jeff lived in Hawaii for awhile and they were taking their time getting the clearance sent to our social worker.  We got it today!!  Our social worker emailed our homestudy for us to read over.  On Monday, she will send it off to USCIS and to our placing agency, Lifeline Children's Services.  Yay!! I am so happy to finally have this completed.  Now we can start assembling the rest of our dossier.  Ukraine is time sensitive, so our placing agency told me to hold off gather some of the documents we will need to add to our dossier with our homestudy.  I have been eager to get it all together.  I have a spreadsheet with a list of items that I am eager to mark off the list! 

We are planning a yard sale on May 8th to raise more funds for the adoption.  We are taking donation of gently used items to sell.  If anyone has something to donate, we will gladly come pick it up.  Our May is going to be very busy with catering.  The last week of May is almost completely booked. up.  If we could get a June and July that are just as busy, we will be able to put a huge dent into the money we need.  We are also having another Chick Fil a Spirit night in May.  We hope to pick up some vending jobs to sell bbq over the summer as well. 
God has faithfully met our needs thus far and I have no doubt he will continue to do so!! 

Fingerprinted!

I haven't blogged lately as there has not been anything to say.  Waiting is waiting and I am afraid I would blog and complain, so as mothers always say, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."  Anyway, we got our fingerprints completed with USCIS on Thursday.  The people in the Nashville office were very nice.  Thank goodness, because my dear sweet husband did not bring his driver's license.  This week has been crazy busy for us particularly for Jeff.  He works for a christian radio station and there were two major events with his clients.  The first was a private concert with Matthew West for donors to the Nashville Rescue Mission and the second was the Southern Women's Show.  The Fish (the station where Jeff works) has a booth each year at the Southern Women's Show.  Thursday was the opening day in Nashville, so Jeff had been crazy busy helping to set up the Fish booth as well as a booth for HopeHouse International. (More on them later)  Anyway,  I took a half day off work for our fingerprinting appointment and drove to downtown Nashville to pick him up at the convention center.  We get all the way to the Nashville USCIS office, pull into the parking lot and Jeff asks me if he needs his ID.  UUhhh....YES!!! I mean the appointment letters come from the Department of Homeland Security!  Of course they need an ID.  I had been reminding him for two weeks about this appointment.  It did not even occur to me to remind him to have his driver's licence!!  Since I was driving he didn't think about grabbing his wallet out of his briefcase which he left at the booth with some of his co-workers.  This was not a major catastrophe and all he had to do was go back and get it.  The USCIS Nashville office workers were great. They were very laid back about the whole thing and said it was fine for Jeff to come back later with his license.  Thank you, Jesus!    So we got fingerprinted after we BOTH had our IDs and it gave me something to write about!!!!  Lesson learned....I will keep all of our important papers when we travel and bring my husband passport whenever we need ID, just in case!! 

Speaking of driver's license, my baby sister,Aera (adopted from Ukraine) got her driver's license on Thursday!  I can't believe she is old enough to drive all by herself!!  She was very excited and we were very proud of her. She is an awesome kid and the joy in our lives.

Now that we have been fingerprinted, we get to wait some more.  We have to receive approval.  I don't expect to see that any sooner than June, but I guess God could speed that up.  Our homestudy is completely written and almost approved except we are waiting on Hawaii to send the child abuse clearance on Jeff.  That has been a real pain for our social worker, but supposedly she will have it early this week.  After it is approved, she will send a copy to USCIS to go along with our fingerprints.  Not sure what happens after that...other than waiting.  I am very well aware of the WAITING!!!

Quick note about Hope House International:  They are a great organization that build houses for christian couples in Ukraine if they agree to adopt three or more orphans!!  The couples are personally selected to adopt based our their heart for orphans.  This is their website if you want to check them out.  http://www.hopehouseinternational.org/   Jeff and I attended their fundraiser in February and we really felt like it was a God moment.  We feel like we are suppose to be involved with this organization in some form or fashion.  Jeff has been currently trying to help them by arranging for them to have a booth at the Southern Women's Show, so they can increase awareness and raise money.  We are very excited to have learned about this organization and we are excited to see how God is going to use us to help them!!