Submitted

I just received an email from our placing agency telling us that our dossier was successfully submitted!!  I can't really explain my feelings.  I feel excited and anxious all at the same time.  The closer our adoption gets the more real it feels.  Before it seemed like this event that is happening way in the future, but it is not way  in the future anymore..it is approaching rapidly!  Now that we are submitted,  (For those who are in the "know" about Ukraine adoption) we wait too hear if we are approved and for our appointment date.  That date could be anywhere from a month to a month and a half from now if our timeline is consistent with the other timelines I have seen.  I have been obsessively following blogs and I always look for their timeline to find out how long things take.  I am hoping and praying for an appointment in the middle to later part of August, because I really would like to start the school year out and meet my new students before leaving them in the hands of an interim.  That is going to be tough for me too....trusting someone else to take care of my Special Education kiddos!! 

Praise report on the fundraising front!!  We went to visit our BBQ competition friends..we call them family..this last weekend.  We told them about our adoption timeline being much sooner than we thought and some of the teams and one of the reps donated some of their money from the contest to our adoption!!  We were soo touched and I had a hard time not bawling my eyes out!!  We really love our BBQ family.  We have missed not seeing them this year, because we haven't competed in order to save money for the adoption.  They are precious people and we are praying that God blesses them above and beyond anything they can imagine.  They were able to raise $1075.  We are so thankful to them and to God for putting such generous awesome people in our lives.  We can't wait to introduce our kiddos to these special people.  Thank you, Billy from Do Rag Q, Joe and Voncile of Smokey Mountain Smokers, Ron (our very favorite KCBS rep.), and Jeff of Grog N Hogs. You all are awesome!!  
Please continue to pray for us.  We still need to raise about 17,000 more and we need God's continued guidance in the rest of the process!!

The Dossier Saga!!!

I was beginning to think we were not going to be our dossier together! On Tuesday, we went to the doctor and got our medical forms filled out.  They had a notary in the office, so she notarized it.  Sounds easy, right?  The next day, I took all my beautifully notarized documents to the Rutherford County Clerk's office, because Tennessee required a notary certification on any document they apostille.  Well, at the office they were looking up all the notary information and we quickly discovered that the notary from the doctor's office was a Know County notary.  For those of you that don't know, Know County is Knoxville and it's about 4 to 5 hours from Murfreesboro. Rutherford County won't certify a notary out of county...so I had two choices: Overnight the medicals to Knox County clerk and pray they will overnight it back. Or go back to the doctor's office and arrange for another notary to come that day and notarize new medical forms.  We choose the latter.  The nice girl in the doctor's office had a friend who was a notary and she agreed to come do it later that day for free!! I was happy...this was working out.  I ran my errands and got the other notary certifications I needed.  Jeff picked up the newly notarized medicals.  When I got home, I looked at the medicals to ensure everything was great. Well..you guessed it..everything was NOT great.  For some strange reason, the notary signed the document TWO different ways.  Once with her First name, middle initial and last name and the other with her initials.  Well, I KNEW that I would not be able to get the notary certification, because they compare the notary's signature to the signature in the book. If she signed it two different ways they were not going to match!  I almost cried!  Sooooooo.........today Jeff ( I had to go to a training for work) called the doctor's office and arranged a time for a notary I called and hired the last night to come and notarized a THIRD copy of the medicals.  Then he took them to get the certification and off to Nashville for the apostille on all the documents.  He called me 10 minutes ago to tell me that our dossier is in a Fed Ex envelope to be sent Priority Overnight to our social worker (Jana).  Thank you Jesus!!!  I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO relieved to have it shipped off.  It will get to Jana by 10 am tomorrow and she will scan copies of every document to Sasha (our facilitator).  He will translate them and she is going to DHL the document to him tomorrow.  Sooo...as long as nothing happens to Fed Ex or DHL, our dossier should be in Sasha's hands in time to submit our dossier on June 30th.   Please pray for our dossier to be delivered and submitted with no more complications!  I am ESTATIC to be done with this part of the process.   Oh yeah..we had a minor issue with our homeowner's insurance notary also, but that was easily fixed! Our homeowner's insurance company was right across the street from the county clerk so he walked over with a new document and we re-notarized it and got the certification.  Woo.. I am beat!  Now I can relax!  At least for a brief moment...then off to more fundraising.  Two catering jobs this weekend.

Last document!

I got our last document ( our medicals) today! Tomorrow I am headed to the State Department for the apostille. I am so happy to have them ALMOST completed.  I will then FED EX the documents to our social worker at Lifeline so she can double check them, then they are off to Ukraine for our June 30th submission date.  I am shocked that we were able to get them all together so quickly...in just over a week and a half.  Maybe now I can clean my house and get some laundry folded!!  My husband is tired of wearing wrinkled clothes! :-)

Another update

We have all our documents together for our dossier except our medicals.  I have been on the phone half the day with the doctor's office trying to make sure the notary will be there and to make sure they got all of our lab results..etc..... We go for our office visit tomorrow.  I am praying that we will have the notarized document by Wednesday morning at the latest. 
On the $$$$ front,  we found out on Friday that Jeff will be getting the BIGGEST commission check he has EVER received since working for the radio station!  Sooo....we will be able to put $5000 into the adoption fund from just this one check.  Talk about a God timing!  Granted, we still need another $20,000..but I would never have thought we would get that much money from his commission.  We have some more catering jobs this month and money coming from jobs we already completed...so we should be able to have another $5000 to add to it by mid July.  That will leave us at $15000.  We haven't sent out support letters to our families yet....I hate asking for money.  We are also trying to get an adoption grant.  We aren't sure what to do about a reference letter from our pastor.  Our church is huge and we don't know our pastor personally...we know our small group leader and the assistant pastor.
If we can get it all together and submitted next week, then I should have news soon about our travel date.  I highly suspect it will be in August.  I am hoping/praying for mid-August.  I really want to be at school for the first week or two to get my students settled and to meet them.  Please pray for God's perfect timing...even if it isn't my timing! :-)

Dossier

I have been scrambling all week to get the documents together for our dossier.  On Monday and Tuesday, I was completely stressed out.  I was on the phone with the mortgage company for 3 hours trying to get them to write a letter. Finally they got me a manager who could type! Then we spent have the day Tuesday trying to figure out how to get an actual DOCTOR to complete our medical form.  Apparently in Tennessee, actual doctors don't see patients, only physician assistants see patients.  UGH! So frustrating.  I think we have that worked out now. We are suppose to go on Tuesday to the doctor to get checked out AGAIN and then the doctor will complete our medical forms...there is a girl in their office who can notarize it, so hopefully it will all work out.  The doctor is on vacation until the 22nd so we couldn't get anything sooner.  It should be okay if I get the forms by the 23th or 24th.  Our social worker is going to email copies of all our documents so Sasha (our facilitator) can start translating them.  The mortgage company is sending our letter by FedEx so it should be here today.  I called Iowa about the apostille and all I have to do is call them with the notary information and they will send me the apostille.  Easy! 

All the rest of the documents are easy to get.  I am waiting on my social worker to send me some more documents.  They need to be attached to some of my documents that aren't notarized.  There are SOOO many details!  
It looks like it is coming all together and we will be able to submit our dossier by June 30th.  I am completely surprised because it seems like so much to get together.  Please pray that the medical form will get done correctly with no more hassle and continue to pray for the financing to move forward.

Well, June 30th it is!

Jeff and I have decided that we are going to try and get all our stuff together to submit our dossier on June 30th.  We still do not have all the money we need...not even close, but we are going to trust God to take care of that "small" detail.  I am not completely certain I will be able to get everything together in time.  June 30th really isn't that far off.  We still need the following:

• Notarized employer letter for Jeff  ( I got mine on Friday)
• Immigration Approval ( we should have that next week)
• Medical forms for both Jeff and me
• Copy of our doctor's license
• Three copies of our marriage certificate
• State Police clearance letters- notarized
• Two color copies of our passports
• Mortgage Verification letter
• Homeowner's insurance letter

Wow, that seems like ALOT.  Hope I can get it all together within a week and a half.  Yikes!!
If we can get it all together, I would guess our appointment date will be in August.  I am hoping LATE August to give us more time to get the money. 
Right now, I am trying to remember to BREATHE!

Submission date

Okay, when I said I hoped our submission date was not too far off...I didn't mean I wanted it to be in three weeks!!  Our facilitator emailed our agency telling them that our submission date is on June 30th.  Not exactly what I am prepared for.....we had hoped to travel this year,but we do not have enough money to travel as early as a June 30th submission date would require.  From what I can tell from other blogs, the travel date is a month to two months after the submission date.  That would mean we would travel late July to August.  We are shortly $25,000 at this point.  I was completely stressed out yesterday.  We still have a large number of things to gather for our dossier and I am not certain we can get them all together and sent to Ukraine in time to be translated and then submitted.  I am completely confused at how we got a submission date so quickly with no warning.  I thought we would have a couple months to finish prepping our dossier before we have to submit which would make our travel time 3 or 4 months out. 

Anyway, Jeff and I prayed for a long time yesterday and we just have no peace about this situation. We don't want to borrow more than $10,000 if we can help it.  We don't feel that it is God's Will to borrow money for our adoption.  So we don't know what will happen now.  I emailed our agency and asked if it is possible to get a different submission date, because we won't be ready for this one.  She is suppose to get back with me after she hears from our facilitator.  We still don't have our immigration approval not to mention needing to get a letter from my employer...I am a teacher...we are out of the summer.  I don't even know if my employer is in town! There are just so many things upsetting about this situation.  If we had any idea we would be expected to submit our dossier this soon, we would have told our agency we needed to put things on hold so we had time to raise more money.

  I don't know how other people come up with that much money, but our resources are limited.  We have been cooking/catering our butts off, yard sales, recycling fundraisers, flower bulb fundraiser, collecting change, Chic-Fila Spirit night, and a few donations.  Still with all that work we have only raised/earned $11,000.  I am in the process in applying for a grant, but when I look up other grants they all seem to be on hold due to lack of funding.  We haven't yet  simply asked for donations, but we are probably going to have to do that.  Jeff and I had been discussing taking out a loan over the weekend, then on Sunday,  Crown Financial was on the radio with a question/answer section... One of the questions was "Should I borrow money for my adoption?"  His response was that adopting is missions work for helping orphans and that the person should not borrow money, but should give their friends, family and church an opportunity to invest in their adoption as missions work.  I thought that made sense, but it is still very difficult for me to ask people for money. 
Please pray for God's guidance and clarity of mind in this situation.  We want God's timing and Will, but we just don't feel that going into debt and then having two additional mouths to feed is in God's Will.   Pray that we get favor with the SDA in Ukraine and get a different submission date or that God shows up in a mighty way and provides the money we need if we have to keep the June 30th submission date. 

The latest news!

Our homestudy, petition to adopt and power of attorney are currently on their way to our facilitator in Ukraine.  We should know in a few week when we get to submit our dossier.  I am hoping that it will not be a long time since we are requesting children over the age of 6.  Guess we will see.  Once we find out our submission date that will give us an estimate of when we will travel to Ukraine.  I read numerous blogs and it usually is a month to two months after the submission date that people travel.   We really wanted to complete our adoption this year, but it may not happen until early next year.  I am working on being patient and trusting God that everything will be in his timeline and not mine.  Not easy for a control freak like myself!!!  I am also not excited about Ukraine in the winter....I hate cold and ice!!

Last week, I drove to Nashville to get our homestudy and other documents apostilled only to find out that we had to have a notary certificate for each notarized document.  I drove back to Murfreesboro to get that document and then back to Nashville the next morning to try the apostille again.  Thank the Lord that we live near Nashville, so it isn't a terrible waste of gas.  However, I do not like having to do something twice.  I want to get it right the first time!!! I should have listen to my inner voice that said to call the State Department first to see if I need anything.  But I did not listen to myself....

Today, I filled out the correction form for USCIS indicating that I have been married 0 times previously and took it to our homestudy social worker who will send that form along with some corrections immigration wanted on our homestudy.  The governmental tail chasing should almost be complete. 

We had another small yard sale and sold BBQ over the week and raised just over $300.  Right now, we need another $400 and will be have all the United States expenses cover as well as our fee to our facilitator.  Praise the Lord!!!  The next big focus is our Ukrainian expenses which are estimated to be around $25,000.  I have yet to apply for grants, so I am hoping we can get at least one grant to help with those costs. 
Thank you to everyone who has donated money and yard sale items.  We really appreciate your generosity. We will have another yard sale later this month and we are catering and selling BBQ like crazy people!! I am confident God will continue to provide the financing we need! Please continue to keep us in your prayers!