Merry Christmas!

2009 has been big year for our family! We began exploring adoption in November of 2008 and made the decision final in February. We are adopting a little girl from Russia! After the careful selection of an agency and completing the approval process, the paper chase officially began in April and we submitted our completed 81 page dossier to our agency in July. “Hope” will be between the ages of 8 months and 2 years old when we receive our “referral” and meet her for the first time. We are very excited, but it is a long wait. It has been a little over 5 months so far and it will be another 7-13 months until we finally see a photograph of her beautiful face and make our first trip to Russia! Then it will be another 3-5 months until we go back and bring her home for good. Thank you to everyone who has supported us through prayer, finances and encouragement over the last year. We are truly grateful for your support and prayers as we wait. You can follow our journey here on our online adoption blog.

So far, we have spent nearly $8,000, about half of which was funded by the generosity of friends and relatives who have supported us financially through the Journey to Hope fund and/or purchased coffee through our online adoption coffee store – thank you! And, so far, we have done it entirely debt-free, praise the Lord! If you would like to purchase coffee to help support our adoption, you can visit the store at:
www.justlovecoffee.com/journeytohope

You can join the monthly coffee club or make a one-time purchase. Every bag of coffee purchased through our store supports our adoption as well as provides help to an orphanage in Ethiopia. We also had a garage sale fundraiser in the spring that raised enough money to cover the entire cost of our home study and we received a $3,000 grant from the Steven Curtis Chapman foundation, Show Hope, this summer! Funds from Show Hope will become available to us when we incur our next set of expenses, which will be when we receive our referral and travel to Russia in the next 7-13 months. It’s easy to see that God has supported our decision to adopt, but our greatest expenses are yet to come. Please consider a year-end gift for the Journey to Hope and help us bring Hope home from Russia!

Benjamin is very excited that he will finally get to play an active role as a big brother – he has been one for over three years now! He has already started collecting toys and books to give to Hope when she comes home. He has placed several items in her room that he wants to pass down to her and he already speaks of her in a tender, loving, brotherly way. It’s so sweet! He is a very active, happy kindergartener and enjoys playing dress ups, knights, cars, robots, Pet Shops, Webkinz, riding his bike and scooter and spending time with his friends and family. He has been schooling at home via the Ohio Virtual Academy since October and has excelled in his class. He is now reading and writing and is learning new things every day. It has been neat to be so active in his learning and I have enjoyed being his “learning coach” this year, even though it means less “freedom” in my schedule. I wouldn’t trade it for the world!

Chad is in his 7th year with Teen Challenge, Cincinnati, where he works full-time as Program Supervisor, heading up the programs and staff of the men’s home. We have also begun the process of applying to launch a Teen Challenge in Cheyenne, Wyoming! Chad flew out west in early October and met with community leaders there to explore the area, pray and determine if this is where God is leading our family and the ball has been rolling ever since. He attended the necessary training in the fall and quickly began making connections and jumping through all the required hoops on the local, regional and national levels. He just submitted his final proposal, resume and reference letters to the national office this week, so now we wait!

Waiting seems to be a theme for us! We have not always been patient through the wait, but we know that God is walking with us and savoring every moment we share as we wait, hope and dream with Him through the peaks and valleys. I like the way Beth Moore puts it best …

“God takes his own sweet time because sweet time is God’s to take. Why wait if there’s no one to wait with you? God created time for man. A wait is time-oriented and, therefore, primarily man-oriented. Perhaps among a host of other reasons, I think God often ordains a wait because He purely enjoys the togetherness of it.”

It’s true. We cling to God during the wait like no other time. He is our hope and comfort. He is our refuge. He is with us while we wait! As we remember the birth of the long awaited Savior of the world this Christmas, we pray that you would have Hope in your hearts and feel the presence of God. Emmanuel, God with us, even and especially in the wait.

Merry Christmas and a very blessed New Year!
Chad, Emily and Benjamin

~Remembering Abby and waiting for Hope!~

Five Months

Well, we are now 5 months into our wait. Only 7-13 months to go until we get our referral. That is when we will finally see our daughter's face in a photograph for the first time and receive an invitation to travel to Russia and meet her in person! I found this wonderful article about waiting and wanted to share it.



Wow, did it make me feel good to know that the emotional rollercoaster we are on is normal! Mix that with Abby's 3rd birthday, which was just a couple of weeks ago and the other important dates (today would have been her real birthday if she had waited two more weeks for my scheduled c-section instead of coming early). Next Friday was her original due date. It brings so many feelings to the surface.

So we are in limbo between Abby and Hope ... and the waiting feels long. We still miss Abby, but we are longing for the day when we get to finally see and bring Hope home from Russia. Benjamin is ready to finally get to live out his role as big brother. And we are ready for two little ones to fill our days!

Thanks for your ongoing love, prayers and support while we wait for Hope! And a very Merry Christmas to everyone who has follwed us on our journey!!

Four Months

Werner Adoption Coffee Store
We opened our online coffee store tonight to start fundraising through Just Love Coffee Roasters. It seems silly, but I am actually feeling a little nervous (and excited!). If you visit the site, please feel free to repost it on Facebook or forward it on to friends and family. I am hopeful that this will be a good way to raise funds to help offset our adoption expenses.

Just Love was founded by adoptive parent and long-time cofee connoisseur, Rob Webb, who realized the expense of international adoption firsthand when he traveled to Ethiopia to bring home his daughter last year. After much prayer and discussion with their first two children they started their adoption journey in August 2008. During the flurry of paperwork and preparation, Rob & Emily read books not only on adoption in general, but specifically on Ethiopia. Learning that Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee caught Rob's attention, and after reading about the living conditions and wages of the average coffee farmer, he was compelled to take action. What developed through his reading and his trip to Ethiopia to unite with his daughter was a realization that he could combine his expertise and longstanding desire to roast his own coffees with his desire to help others. Just Love Coffee Roasters was born! Roasting Fair Trade Specialty coffees, Just Love uses proceeds to help an Ethiopian orphanage and families adopting not just from Ethiopia, but from anywhere in the world.

We are about 4 months into our wait now. I am told by our agency that it will be about 8 to 14 months from here. It seems like a long time, yet at the same time it seems so short. We will not have any expenses until that time, so this is the time for us to prepare! When we receive our referral, which will be any time after next July, our second installment of agency fees, as well as our international fees, which are the bulk of our expenses, will be due. We will also have travel expenses as we finally travel to Russia to meet Hope for the first time! We hope you will purchase some of Just Love's coffees for yourself or as a Christmas gift this year and help us on our Journey to Hope!

Thank you everyone for your continued prayers, encouragement and support through this long process. We can't wait until the day we finally bring Hope home from Russia!!!

Three Months

Great news! It's been three months since we submitted all of our documentation and we have just been awarded a $3,000 grant from Show Hope towards our adoption expenses!! Show Hope is Steven Curtis Chapman's foundation supporting international adoption. We got the letter in the mail this afternoon and we are so excited! This comes on the heels of the Emergency Nurses Association (www.ENA.org) national conference in Baltimore this past weekend where Abby's story was shared with thousands of emergency nurses from across the country who made the trip to attend the annual conference. We received an email yesterday from the nurse who coordinated with us last spring to get photos and information in preparation for her presentation on unexpected infant/child death. She said that the nurses were very moved by our story and that she will be mailing some responses to us about how it will change the practices of ER's around the country. Praise God!! Two great ways that God has used what we have been through to make a difference. And it always blesses us whenever Abby is remembered in a thoughtful way. Needless to say, we are feeling very thankful today and just wanted to share this great news!

Two Months

Well, we have been waiting for almost two months now. According to the timeline given to us by our agency, that means we have anywhere from 10-16 months to go! When we started this process, the wait time was approximately 9-12 months from submission to referral. Now that has increased slightly to 12-18 months. It's the first shift they've had in awhile, thankfully. We have been told that most families typically get their referral in 12 months on average.

There are many factors that go into the waiting period. Other agencies from all over the world have submitted their clients' dossiers and are being assigned to the same regions as our agency, so there is much more activity than we sometimes realize. Families that are ahead of us on the waiting list can accept or decline their referral, which can cause the wait to be longer for those further down the list. Red tape issues can create a backlog in the waiting process. In fact, in January of this year, the Russian Ministry of Education decided to take measures against agencies who were behind on their post-placement reports. A list was created of agencies not only in the United States, but around the world who were out of compliance and regions across Russia were told not to work with these agencies until they updated their status. Our agency ended up on that list in August, but fortunately, they have quickly remedied the situation and it did not cause much interruption to the process.

Ultimately, referrals from international adoptions are most often "sure things." Most are children who have been legally abandoned in their countries of origin: either their birthparents are unknown or, if they are known, their parental rights have long been terminated. Things can go wrong, of course, but most of the time once a referral has been accepted, the next part of the waiting period is filled with the happy anticipation of getting house and home and heart ready for parenting ... not to mention preparing to travel!

Meanwhile, until that exciting day comes for us, we will wait with HOPE ...

FTIA Annual Reunion Picnic

We went to the annual Families Thru International Adoption reunion picnic on Saturday. Over 1200 people attended ... families that have adopted or are currently in the process of adopting from Russia, Azerbaijan, China, Guatamala, Vietnam, India, Brazil, Ethiopia and Panama. We got to meet our Russia Coordinator in person (pictured below) and she gave us some good news ...


She said that when our dossier arrived at her office, she already had several on her desk she was working on. However, ours was so well organized and accurate that she was able to bypass the ones on her desk and mail it to Russia immediately! So all that hard work paid off! It is currently being translated by FTIA affiliates in Russia and will be prepared to be sent to Russian officials soon. Let's hope that the Ministry of Education has the same impression of our dossier and expedites the process, too!

The picnic was a great opportunity for us to meet other families who have adopted or are adopting from Russia. We met a wonderful family who lives in greater Cincinnati who just brought two adorable little girls (sisters) home from Russia in March. They had nothing but wonderful things to say about our agency and their role in the process. FTIA was right by their side every step of the way! Needless to say, it was so encouraging to hear success stories and to see these families who have waited so long enjoying their new families!

That said, we have a few prayer requests: (1) That our applications for grants and loans from various organizations would be looked upon with favor, (2) that we would be assigned to a region that would expedite the adoption process (preferrably Kaliningrad, which currently takes 3-6 months for a referral!) and, (3) that we would be able to find other creative ways to raise money for our adoption (we are planning another garage sale fundraiser this fall).

Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support. They mean so much to us!!

Dossier Sent to Russia!!

We received an email today saying that our dossier has been accepted and mailed to Russia ... everything rides on HOPE now ...



"We waited for you against all hope. We came for you with the greatest of hopes!" ~ Parents of an adopted child

Dossier Complete

Sorry it has been so long since our last entry. We have been busy collecting everything that is needed to complete our dossier. With that said, Benjamin and I went to the Secretary of State's office in Columbus to have our documents apostilled this week and our dossier is now complete! I have two tasks to complete this weekend: prepare our dossier for submission to our agency on Monday and finish another adoption grant application.


It's been a tearful morning as I sit in the kitchen trying to find the words to express our journey on one single page for our latest grant application. I have told the story so many times, written it so many different ways, that I find myself at a loss for words and praying for God's ... and Abby's ... help. I have been thinking about her all morning. For some reason, the reality that we are at the threshold of submitting our dossier has brought bittersweet tears to the surface. One little girl is gone ... another has HOPE ... brings Hope ... is HOPE!! And soon will be ours!

Needless to say, we are at the place we have hurried to get. We have hurried up and now we wait! Our paper chase is complete and we are ready to submit our dossier (all the required paperwork we have spent the last three months collecting with notarizations, certifications and apostilles) to our agency to be forwarded to Russia so they can match us with a little girl. The process can take as little as 3 months and up to 14 months, depending on what region we are assigned to and how the process goes for other waiting families. But at last, we have our place in line! The wait is already killing me and it's only just begun. There is still so much to do ... more grant applications, finding additional ways to raise money, meeting with the experts at Children's Hospital's International Adoption Center, updating and executing our will, planning for our travel including immunizations, preparing her room, etc., so I know I will be busy and my time will be filled. I'm just a little tired right now from the race to get to this poinnt and can't wait until the day when we finally have that precious little one in our arms for good!!

Many of you have been asking, "what's next?" So, I thought I'd take a moment to let you know what is going to happen from this point ...

* We will send our completed dossier to our agency with our first installment of agency fees ($2,800) and payment for translation and processing in Russia ($1,540) on Monday
* Our agency will review our dossier to make sure everything is in order and send the originals to their staff in Russia
* Our agency's staff coordinator in Russia will have our dossier translated and certified in Russia
* Our translated, certified dossier will be delivered to the Ministry of Education in Russia in the region where our agency anticipates we will receive the most expedient referral according to our preferences as stated in our documents
* We will wait to receive word from the Ministry of Eduction in that region for a referral (photographs and available background/medical information on a child)
* Travel arrangements will be made and we will apply for entry visas for our first trip to Russia to meet our referred child!!

From the time we accept a referral to our first trip is approximately 4-12 weeks. A representative from our agency will be with us during our entire trip upon arrival in Russia. While we are there, we will meet with the orphanage director/doctor and visit with our referred child. The trip will last 6-7 days and we will send all additional information we receive on the child to Children's Hospital from Russia for review while we are there. If we accept this child, we will file a petition to adopt to the court clerk and give her a new legal name. Then we will go home and wait to be assigned a court hearing date for our adoption. During this time, we will collect the required forms, etc., to compile our second dossier before we travel to Russia to bring her home. The wait between trips is approximately 4 months and we should expect to stay in Russia for 3-4 weeks.

Of course, there are a lot more details ... some big ... some little. I will post more as we enter each new phase of the process. Since I'm a detail person, it's an easy job to make sure none of the details get overlooked, but I do get tired, so please pray that God gives me the strength and energy to continue to do everything that is needed to climb this mountain. And that He continues to provide for us financially. Our biggest expenses are yet to come, but we have faith that He will provide everything we need. Thank you for following along with us on this journey, and for your friendship, patience, support, understanding and prayers as we go through this process. We love and appreciate each of you and all you have done to help us get to this point.

And now, we wait ...

For Grandma (a.k.a. "G.G.")

Dear Grandma,

Since you don't have computer access, we wanted to provide you with a way to read our blog and hear all about this journey of adoption we have been on. We've printed all the pages in sequence, so it reads like a book, with the most current entey last and the oldest entry first. I hope it will help you feel more connected to this process and to your next great grandchild. We love you and are so glad you are here with us as we continue on the journey to HOPE ...

Love,
Chad, Emily & Benjamin

Getting Closer

It's been awhile since our last update and we've been busy working on completing the requirements to finish our home study. We are excited to share that we submitted the final home study requirements last night and should receive a draft of the social worker's report this weekend! Hooray! Tomorrow morning, we are going to apply for our passports, which will take 4-6 weeks to process. Please pray this does not delay our goal to submit our dossier by the end of June!! We did not anticipate such a long wait just for passports or we would have done it sooner. With so much to do, sometimes it's hard to know what to do first!

After the home study is finalized, we will complete and notarize a few remaining forms that must be dated after the home study and the paper chase will be complete! But, we will have to wait for our passports to arrive before we will be able to submit everything. The signature page must be printed and notarized first. Once we have all required documentation in our hands, we will then need to take everything to the the county clerk to certify each notary's official capicity and then to the state to be apostilled. THEN we will finally be ready to submit our dossier for translation and submission to the Russian Federation and the wait begins! We are getting excited!! :)

The wait for Russia is approximately 9-14 months. A portion of our agency fee will be due with our dossier, but the big expenses are yet to come. While we are waiting, we will be applying for various adoption grants and loans and raising support to help offset the larger portion of our expenses. The largest amount will be due at referral, which is when we receive a photograph, medical history and background information on a child to be reviewed by us and by the international adoption experts at Children's Hospital. Upon acceptance of the referral, we will have to travel to Russia for trip #1 to meet her in person and make our acceptance official. Additional agency fees, travel expenses, international fees, in-country transportation, interpreter/representative expenses, and fees resulting from Russia accreditation requirements for FTIA (our agency) will all be due before we travel. We really need some grant money to help with these costs! Please pray for favor as we apply for grants and loans and that God will continue to provide for us, as He has already, as we continue on this journey.

We are so excited to be so close to getting on the waiting list! Thank you for all of your continued prayers, encouragement and excitement as well as those of you who have supported us financially through this process! We are so blessed to have you on this journey with us!!

Thank you!

We just wanted to send out a great big *THANK YOU!* to everyone who helped us over the last few weeks by donating items for sale, tents, tarps, telling your friends, posting on Facebook, and coming by in person to offer your support for our garage sale/adoption fundraiser!! Because of you, we reached (and exceeded) our goal of $1,000 to cover our home study expenses. We raised a grand total of $1,103.20 in just three days! Thank you, Lord, you always give us more than enough!!

Here are some pictures from our big event ...

Garage/Bake Sale Fundraiser This Weekend

Thanks to the generous help of our many friends, neighbors, church and family, we have collected a houseful of items and baked goods to sell in our garage/bake sale fundraiser this weekend. We hope to have a good turnout of buyers and people who want to help support our adoption efforts. We have lots of baby clothes, maternity clothes, baby supplies, household items, furniture, toys and more!!!!

Here's a link to a more complete listing and photos on Craig's List:
http://cincinnati.craigslist.org/gms/1168864929.html

Our final meeting with the social worker was this past Monday, so we are almost finished with the home study. We are getting fingerprinted tomorrow and have our appointment with the CIS on Tuesday. Then it's just a few last requirements to fulfill and the social worker will be able to finish her reports.

It is/was our goal to use the garage/bake sale money to pay for the home study fees so we can get started applying for grants and loans to fund the next step, which will be submitting our dossier for translation and submission to the Russian adoption officials for consideration. We still have quite a few requirements to complete before we will be ready for this next step. In the meantime, please pray that God will continue to bless our efforts and provide the funding needed to complete this phase of the adoption process.

For any visitors to this site generated from the fundraiser or cards we have given out recently, please click here to learn more about our story and how we started on the Journey to Hope. Thank you for supporting us in this incredible adventure to bring Hope home!

The Home Study Continues ...

Last night was our second visit from the social worker. I wasn't as nervous this time around. It just felt like a visit from a friend! Part of her role will be to help us make the adjustment when we bring our child home and to be a support through the process. She spent some time reviewing and explaining various medical and emotional issues that are typically associated with children adopted internationally and discussed some adjustment issues we can expect after we return with our child. We'll be starting our training this week, so we'll get a little more in depth look at some of the issues we may be facing. She also focused on my interview. I completed a 14 page questionnaire (my homework) since her last visit and we reviewed my answers together. Chad's interview begins when she returns on Monday (he'll do his homweork over the weekend).

We have already completed many of the required forms and collected much of the required documentation for the home study, which should be finished by mid-May. So far, we have been able to pay cash for everything, which has been such a gift! We already had some money in savings and a few people have donated to help us pay for our 'startup' expenses. We are so grateful! Our goal is to stay as debt-free as possible during the early stages of the adoption ... at least until we can begin applying for grants and loans, which are not available until the home study is complete. All of the organizations that we have found providing grants and loans for adoption will require that we submit a copy of the completed home study with our application. So getting through this first step is crucial to funding the rest.

This week, we'll be sending our application to the CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services), which is a division of Homeland Security. We'll also be fingerprinted and get our passports. Then we'll turn our attention back to compliling the various documents required for our dossier. Thankfully, the home study fee is not due until it has been completed by the social worker, which will be sometime in May. These are pretty big expenses, but we know the Lord will continue to provide for everything. He has already provided so much!

Thanks to everyone who has prayed for us, listened to us, encouraged us and supported us up to this point. It has been an amazing process so far and we are amazed at how quickly everything has been moving along. Stay tuned for more updates. We'll keep you posted!!

The Home Study Has Begun

Tonight was the first of four visits from the social worker for our home study. Chad was his usual calm, cool and collected self, but I have to admit -- I was a ball of nerves!!

Benjamin gave her the tour of the house, starting with the bedrooms. He was so proud to have such an important part in the process! He showed her his room, then Abby's, then ours. She took notes as she scanned each room and thanked Benjamin for his help. It was strange to bring a total stranger into Abby's room just seconds after greeting her and have it be so non-chalant and clinical. But at the same time, it was a relief to have it over with at the beginning. After all, in a year or so, it is going to be "Hope's" room! It was nice to acknowledge that and make it a reality in her presence. We finished touring the rest of the house: upstairs bathroom, living room, kitchen, play room, laundry, storage, downstairs bathroom, garage. And we were done. That fast. All that cleaning and the tour was over in less than 10 minutes!

After the tour was complete, we sat at the kitchen table and began the introductory interview. We skipped all the small talk and went straight for some pretty heavy topics, but, thankfully, Chad's humor and Benjamin's frequent interruptions kept giving us small breaks just when they were needed. I could see tears well up in her eyes a few times as we shared our story and I felt my nerves begin to relax in the comfort of her kindness. She asked a few questions and continued with her notetaking before finally interjecting some really important thoughts ...

One that we had already considered and that she realized after hearing our story, is how we have been uniquely equipped to be adoptive parents. Bittersweet, but true. Losing Abby will help us understand both the loss experienced by the birth parents and the grief experienced by our child. There was a chapter on it in a book we read about adoption a few months ago. Experts call it a "psychological presence" or "the symbolic existence of an individual in the perception of other family members in a way that influences thoughts, emotions, behavior, identity or unity of remaining family members." To put it in simple terms, someone is missing and life is different than it would have been and there are marked moments where that loss is experienced physically and emotionally. Having experienced such a significant loss ourselves, we will be able to relate with her loss and allow her to express grief in healthy ways she grows up and begins to understand the full extent of what it means to be adopted and losing her birth family.

At times, she will feel that someone is missing from her life. We know and understand how that feels. At times she will want to know if her birth parents think about her and may wonder what life would have been like with them. We know what it's like to wonder what would have been. We also know that you cannot give birth to a child, lose that child, and not stop thinking or wondering about them. She may be triggered emotionally by anniversaries or special days. There are anniversaries and special days that trigger our emotions, too. We understand grief on this level and it amazes me to see how God has already intertwined our lives in such a way that He has already begun to mold us into the parents she will need. And just like expecting a baby through pregnancy, we already feel so much love for her. It seems that as we complete each step and get closer to the day we will finally see her, our love for her just continues to grow and grow!

After about an hour of deep discussion, we went over some forms, discussed the steps in the process and she gave us a homework assignment to complete before her next visit. Next week, she will come back and do one-on-one interviews with each of us, separately. In the meantime, we need to complete some questionnaires and continue compiling documents for our dossier, CIS and home study.

It was such a wonderful, amazing experience tonight. I still can't believe this is really happening! Each step brings more confirmation that this is God's path for us and a renewed faith that He will continnue to provide everything we need. I know I will be much more relaxed for the next visit, now that we know what to expect. And I think we've made a new friend in the process, too!!

Hurry Up and Wait

We had our orientation this morning and spoke with the social worker today. We are already scheduled for four visits to take place over the next four to five weeks to complete the interviews that are required as part of our Home Study. Everything seems to be moving quickly!

Lets see. So far we've compeleted the application, been accepted, read and reviewed all of the requirements from the agency and both governments, completed the orientation call, connected with the social worker, scheduled our home study, ordered our 10 hour educational course on DVD and tomorrow I plan to complete the forms to request approval from the CIS and begin working on our dossier. It's hard to believe we've done all this in just the last week and a half! And yet there is a paper mountain still to be climbed ... birth certificates, marriage certificates, employment letters, physician's letters, reference letters, copies of our deed, passports, financial statements, fingerprinting, police clearance reports, photographs and a myriad of other questionnaires, applications and forms required by various state, federal and international agencies. Thank God for checklists! =)

I know it's hurry up and wait, but there is much to be done so we can get our place in line and I can't wait! Have you ever been at the bank and you are rushing to fill out your deposit slip so you can get a spot in line before it gets too long? It feels just like that. While we are busy collecting everything for our dossier, those who have already completed theirs are taking their place in line. The sooner we get done, the sooner we can get in line and ... wait!!

The Big Brother

Every night before Benjamin goes to bed, we read a page from his preschool devotional. The topic last night was 'blessings.' As we were reading, we began to name blessings in our lives like food, a house, a bed, blankets and then he added'a mommy and daddy' which led us into a conversation about adoption. He has known we have been planning to adopt pretty much from the beginning. We had already received the news that we had been accepted to the Russia program and we celebrated with him earlier in the evening, so it was fresh on his mind. We explained that the little girl we were adopting didn't have a mommy or daddy and he got a really sad expression on his face. Then he said, "That makes me really sad for her. I will take care of her. I will teach her not to go into the street if there's a car and protect her." It just melted both of our hearts. He was so tender and sincere in the way he was describing how he felt. I can already see a compassion in his heart towards his new sister. I am so proud of him and I know he is going to be a wonderful big brother.

We've Been Accepted!!!

We were accepted to the Russia program this afternoon, so it's official: we are 'paper pregnant'!!! We were able to share the news with many friends today and are so excited to finally be able to include everyone on this journey! We hope you will continue to check back on our progress. Our orientation is on Tuesday at 11:00, so we have a lot to do between now and then. Our coordinator gave us a bunch of 'homework' assignments to complete prior to Tuesday so that we are prepared. Once orientation is done, the first few steps will be to begin the required 10 hours of training, schedule our home study and apply for CIS approval. Then we will be able to start applying for grants and compile our dossier. Your prayers at this time would be greatly appreciated. We have a mountain of paperwork to collect and so much yet to learn about this whole process. We are so excited to have you along with us on this incredible journey. Thank you for all of the support and encouragement we've already received! It's hard to believe that by this time next year, we will be welcoming home our new baby, "HOPE"!!

Application Submitted

Well, today we submitted our application, so now we pray and wait! Hopefully the agency will receive it tomorrow or Saturday and by early next week, we'll know whether or not we have been accepted and if this journey is going to continue! I'll post next week when we hear something. We are sooooooo excited!!! =)

It's time to tell you ...

We shared our plans to adopt with our parents this weekend and wrote this little note for their first visit to our blog ...

Dear Mom and Dad,
We have been waiting to share something important with you for some time now. It is time to share. Back in November, we attended a seminar on International Adoption and fell in love with the idea of adopting a child from Russia. We have been working hard to pay off our debts and get ourselves ready financially to climb this mountain. We have prayed and believe it is God's will for us to take this journey. So, now, we are ready to share it with you. Please read this blog from the beginning so you can catch up to us on the road we've begun to travel these last few months and continue to check back for updates as we move through the adoption process. We hope you will support us, encourage us, pray for us and help us as we begin our journey to HOPE through adoption.
Love,
Chad & Emily
Benjamin, too!

Going Forward

Just wanted to post a quick update. We have decided to go forward with the application and trust that God will provide for us if this is His will, which we believe it is. We are still within $1000 of the minimum annual income requirement and I read that exceptions are made on a case-by-case basis. We worked hard to pay off most of our debt last year (we sold one car and are paying off the rest with our tax return) and minimal bills, so I think they will still accept us. And Chad is working on finding other work to supplement his full-time income. So, as soon as we get our taxes back and have some cash, we are going to submit our application and tell our families. I am really getting excited as it becomes more and more of a reality that we are going to adopt and bring home a little girl next year!

Putting Application On Hold

Well, it turns out we can't submit our application after all. We just learned yesterday that Chad will lose his part-time job in 60 days, which puts us below the minimum income requirement per family member for the Russia program. He still has his full-time job at Teen Challenge, but it's not enough. We do have 60 days for him to find something else, but we're not sure where God is leading us. Please pray for us as we figure out what to do.

Application Completed

At the advice of a good friend, we have taken some time to explore our hearts on this adoption and what our 'perfect' scenario would look like and realized that Russia is the best program for us (and where we have felt led from the beginning). We have completed the application and are ready to submit it to FTIA just as soon as we collect the last few items we need and get our remaining finances in order. We are both very excited to get started on this adoption journey. We're not allowing fear to keep us from following our heart's desire to add another child to our family.

Answers, Answers!

Wow, I just had the most incredible weekend! I went to the "Captivating" retreat in the Colorado mountains with my friend, Missy, and I am more certain than ever that this is the path for us. I just really felt God speak to my heart His heart for adoption and our need to take risks and live the adventure. I believe He has put the desire to adopt a child in our hearts and He will provide for us. Likewise, He removed the desperate need from my heart for another birth child for the first time since Abby died. In faith, I completed the adoption application this weekend while overlooking the beautiful Buena Vista valley and Colorado mountains with a joy in my heart that another child will soon be joining our family and that we are in for the adventure of a lifetime. Before I go, I would like to share these excerpts from "The Spirit of Adoption" written about God's heart for the orphan and plan of redemption through adoption from the America World Adoption website:

Parenthood was designed to be the outcome of God's beautiful union of marriage. The path toward parenthood, however, can be as winding and varied as the people who travel it. For many couples pregnancy is an easy and effortless milestone in their life. For some, however, the road to parenthood is a long and difficult path, filled with heartache, disappointment and an ongoing sense of failure.

In Genesis 3:16 (NKJV) God says: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children . . .”

This verse tells us that pain is to be a part of this world, even in marriage and childbearing. The broken condition of this world is a reality we must all face. Knowing the condition of this world is significant to our understanding of the blessing of adoption. When we know that suffering is part of a loving God's plan, then we can understand that the existence of orphaned children is not an accident or failure of God's plan.

Have you ever considered the fact that Jesus was adopted? Yes, Jesus' earthly father Joseph adopted him. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew traces the bloodline of Jesus not through his biological mother, Mary, but through his adoptive father, Joseph. Even though one might easily pass over this fact as insignificant, this detail reveals something amazing about God's nature. God does not make mistakes, and He certainly doesn't need a back-up plan. Through this footnote in history we see that for Jesus, adoption was not Plan B.

God's plan of redemption for an imperfect world was set in motion through the very concept of adoption. Not only did He ordain his son Jesus to be adopted, but He made adoption the only way we could become a part of His eternal family. It was His good pleasure to adopt us. In fact, it is His ideal mechanism to establish relationships.

Psalm 113:9 says, "He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the LORD." (NIV)

This verse doesn't say that God makes barren women fertile-although that is certainly within His power. The key phrase is "happy mother." A "happy mother" is God's Plan A. How can a barren woman become a happy mother unless she adopts? Just as God has decided that some couples will experience parenthood through biological birth, He also has ordained some couples to experience parenthood through the miracle of adoption.

(taken from http://www.awaa.org/stories/spiritofadoption.aspx)

One little girl died and now another little girl across the world has hope because there is room in the hearts of her parents for another child. Perhaps we were ordained to experience parenthood through the miracle of adoption from the start ...

Decisions, Decisions!

Well, we decided in December that wanted to pursue adoption in 2009. We have found an agency we like, but are still doing a lot of research on our options. We are still leaning towards international adoption, but we both have a lot of questions to explore.

We first thought Russia would be our country due to having the shortest wait (referral only 2 to 7 months after submitting our dossier then 4-5 weeks until our first trip to Russia). But it is the only country that requires both parents travel and requires two separate trips. And it is a little more expensive since two trips are required for the adoption.

We thought we might like to adopt from China, but it can take more than 30 months just to get a referral and up to 4 years for the adoption to be finalized. With Benjamin turning 5 in just a couple of months, we don't want to wait that long. He would be 8-9 by the time we brought our child home. China does have a "Waiting Children" program, which we have begun seriously considering. If we adopt through the China Waiting Children program, we could have a referral only 2-10 weeks after submitting our dossier!! The waiting program is for special needs children and we are exploring the possibility of opening our hearts up to a special needs child, but we're just not sure that's where we are being led.

There's another possibility that we could adopt domestically, which costs about the same as international adoption, but could also take years. Again, we both feel we are being led in a different direction, but want to be sure that we have explored all of our options. And I thought the decision just to adopt was hard!! Figuring out the who, what and how is even harder. Thanks for letting me work through some thoughts while we try to figure out and pray through all of these decisions.

On an exciting note, we talked to Benjamin today and asked him what he thought about the idea of adopting, explaining that we have been asking God to put another baby in Mommy's tummy for a long time now and that maybe we should see if we could be a family to a baby who doesn't have one. He was very excited about being the big brother to a child who doesn't have a family. I think he really understood what that meant. However, we were sure to tell him that, just like having a baby in Mommy's tummy, we needed to pray and ask God to give us a baby through adoption; that we would try, but that we still wouldn't know if and when it would happen. I wanted to be sure he understood that it was a process and not set him up for more disappointment.

Anyway, thanks for letting me share. I have a feeling I'm going to be a little more active now that we are actually proceeding.