Conception

So what happens after you register? You think how bad can it be...this thing they call the "paper chase?" Well really it isn't too bad...at least not the parts you can do yourself...it is when you are at the mercy of the US government or your doctor's calendar. So you begin to chase things...a lot of which you already have...your birth certificate, marriage license, the deed to your home and other various items. They have to be new...they can't be the one you got when you were born, they have to have been certified with-in the last 12 months...so you order new copies all the while wondering..."it seems like it would be more official to have the people's signatures that were actually there when I was born..." Who knows, you just do it. For Russia, we had to get our passports first because our passport number had to be on every document we sent including the forms we had to send to the immigration department of the US government. So, we all went and got passport photos...these were funny...they told us not to smile so we look ridiculous and frankly...Russian! (when Ruthie and I were there in 07/05 we noticed that most Russians do not smile at strangers...they are, however, not an unfriendly group of people)


Anyway, we had the home study done...only the anticipation of this process was painful. Our social worker was very kind and a believer and just put us at ease from the moment we met her. We drove to their office over in Orlando for our first meeting and that was followed by three home visits. It was around Christmas so my house looked very homey. (Mostly I'm just a functional kind of person but at Christmas, there is just something in the air, ya know?) When this was all done and the report was in, there was nothing to do but to apply to the US government for approval. And so we did. This is where you sweat it out. We waited three months for this approval form (I171H). So, are you ready for it...here comes God moment #2...Christi (our family coordinator) had told me that if we did not have our dossier packet in by the end of the week, we would miss that month's packet of submissions to Russia. I put this up to my girls at MOPS and they prayed over me that morning and would you believe what was in my mailbox when I got home? You guessed it...I171H! This paper is like Gold in the adoption process. And with that, My dossier was over nighted to the agency in VA and off to Russia...and there it is...conception!


"For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is blameless. O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you."
Psalm 84:11-12

Stay tuned for more God moments...