We Are Back Home...And Missing Our Little Girl!

We arrived home in the evening on Christmas Eve, after 24 hours of travel from Eastern Europe.  We were quite tired from the trip and from the week overall...but arrived home to a beautiful white Christmas with our girls!

The trip went very well.  No travel delays, although the airline failed to deliver our luggage on the way over.  They did deliver it to our hotel at 11pm the 2nd day in the foreign country, but we had to wear our travel clothes for our first official meeting and our first visit to the orphanage.  Arghh!!  But, it didn't seem to matter in the end. 

During our first meeting, we found out more background information on little "Claire"...including that her real first name is Anastasia.  So, with that in mind, we decided to name her Anna Loraine.  Anna being short for Anastasia, and Loraine being Christy's grandmother's name.

We had two visits per day scheduled with Anna during the week, which was awesome!  Because of snow and traffic, the drive from the hotel to the baby home could take as much as two hours each way, so we ended up not going back to the hotel the last couple of days and instead toured the area a bit.  We are so fortunate to be traveling to a beautiful area! 

Our visits were incredible.  It was so wonderful to get to spend as much time with Anna as we did.  She is such a lovable and engaging little girl!  And tiny!!  She is the size of a 12-15 month old, but she does walk quite well, and she loves to play with toys!  We did take a LOT of pictures, including these:

Now we wait for a court date.  It will be at least March before that...but we pray it comes quickly and we can go back over to bring Anna home to her family. 

God Bless,
David and Christy

We Have Travel Dates!!!!

We got the call yesterday...and have dates to travel to the foreign country! 

We will soon be meeting our little girl!  This has been such a long journey, but we've stayed true to our mission and soon will be holding little Claire.  Praise Jesus! 

Can you think of a better Christmas gift?

Some More Good News

Well we are moving in the right direction.  Received a call from our agency yesterday.  Now typically when a call comes in from them, I brace myself for bad news.  That's just been the way it goes.  But last week we heard that our dossier had been submitted in the foreign country.  That was CERTAINLY good news.  And then yesterday, the phone rang again.  Uh oh.  And she started out by telling me that the government head of adoptions in our region has been out sick recently.  I thought "oh great, nothing has happened with our paperwork because the person is sick".  But, much to my surprise, there was good news attached.

It seems that our agency's staff overseas reached the government head by phone to inquire about our dossier, and was told that everything was in order and she had instructed her staff to begin putting together dates! 

Yes, you read that right....DATES!  As in, travel dates!  As in, once we receive those, we will know when we are traveling to see our little girl! 

Awesome news, right? 

What a blessed day. 

We'll keep you posted!

Thanksgiving!!!

Our prayers have been partially answered today...in that our dossier has been formally submitted to the officials in the foreign country!!  This is a HUGE step in our journey to bring home our little girl, and one that has been a LONG time coming. 

When we began our journey to adopt little Mindy, it was nearly 10 months ago.  Of course, we hit several roadblocks along the way, including losing Mindy and being told it would not be possible to adopt baby Simon at this time.  But then Claire made herself known to us, and the rest is history.  God's plans certainly present themselves to you if you keep your eyes, ears, and HEART open to them! 

We now await word on our first travel dates.  That will be an amazing step...to actually travel to the foreign country and hold our little girl.  We will keep you posted as that unfolds.  Thank you for your prayers and for continuing to follow us in this beautiful journey. 

God Bless,
David and Christy

Getting Closer to Submission

We talked further with our agency today.  They are reviewing yet another requested update in our homestudy...but this should be the LAST update.  And if all goes well, we should be getting it apostilled tomorrow or Thursday, and sending it to our agency for shipping to the foreign country.  By this time next week, we actually may be prepared to have our dossier submitted!  And after that, we can officially wait for travel dates.  Stay tuned!

Grant Us Wisdom And Peace...

It has been a tough few weeks in our adoption journey.  As many of you know, we were told last week that our adoption of little Simon would not be possible until next spring.  The foreign country would not allow the submission of paperwork until after his 1 year birthday.  After consulting with Andrea at Reece's Rainbow, we all agreed that it was not a good plan to wait until then to continue in our efforts.  Our paperwork would be getting too close to the expiration dates on much of it, and starting over is not a good option.  So we reluctantly decided to move on to another child. 

We talked with Andrea about the children that are in orphanages that our agency has relationships with.  After losing Mindy, we felt compelled to move in a different direction.  That's part of the reason we switched from a girl to a boy.  It didn't feel right "replacing" her so soon with another girl.  But several weeks have passed, and one little girl kept presenting herself to us.  She is nearing 3 years old, is in the same baby home as Mindy, and is facing the institution next year.  And Andrea told us that no one has ever inquired about her.  Well we were going to change that!  So late last week, we commited to little Claire.  And our hope now is that we can begin making progress again.  That we can move quickly to submit our paperwork, make our travels, and work toward bringing home Our Fifth Girl! 

We pray that God will grant us the wisdom to complete this journey, and bring Peace to us and to little Claire. 

God Bless....

Big Meeting in The Foreign Country This Week

One of the issues when committing to David from Mindy is that our adoption agency does not have a relationship with the orphanage he is in.  They are licensed in the region of course, which is why we stayed in that region when committing to another child, but they haven't worked with that home before.  So, this week there is a big meeting between our agency and the government adoption head there to develop an agreement allowing them to represent us in David's adoption.  We have our fingers crossed that the meeting goes well, and that it moves quickly afterward.  We really want to travel before too much more time goes by...especially as we lost a couple months when Mindy's parents came back into the picture. 

Your prayers this week would be really appreciated!! 

God Bless,
David and Christy