It’s been a while since I’ve written an update on our adoption journey. I’m frankly distracted with an upcoming graduation of my oldest child. All my attention is on keeping my emotions at bay while I plan a party celebrating one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met–my son.
As far as the actual adoption process, imagine mountains of paperwork answering extremely personal questions, researching incredibly obscure details about finances, property square footage, notary commission expiries, and going to the sheriff’s to be fingerprinted again for the FBI and you will be imagining our adoption process. Pretty tedious and since we’ve never done this before, we don’t know how far we are in the process or how long anything will take…
There are other more exciting updates to share however!
First of all, we made a new friend–Nina–who has been helping us call the boys every Friday morning at 6:00 a.m. Jeremy calls her, initiates a conference call, and then dials their school (2 p.m. there) Although we’ve tried several times, we have only actually gotten an answer a couple of times. The school official then has to go find our oldest boy, bring him to the phone, and we spend a few minutes asking questions, which Nina translates for us, and then she translates back the 1-2 word answers from our not-so-talkative boy. Nevertheless, they continue to express that they want to come and be a part of our family and this way they are learning that we have not forgotten about them. We hope to meet Nina face to face soon. Possibly by taking one of her cooking classes that she teaches at Kirkwood Community College! Borscht anyone? Seriously, words can’t express how grateful we are for her willingness to help in this way.
Secondly, I received an email from Alex, a missionary in the country where our boys live. Their group visits our boys’ orphanage one weekend a month to do games and love the kids there. Our boys showed off the photo book we gave them to Alex and he contacted me by email. He gave us his cell phone number and when they were with the boys we were able to call and talk then too. We learned that the oldest is growing even taller, but that the shoes we bought them this winter still fit.
Finally, I was floored this week when my friend Shalane invited me out to coffee to let me know that she is having a fund-raising garage sale for our adoption. This gesture is so incredibly generous and kind. The old nest egg is going to take a bit of a hit with three different round trips to Eastern Europe. So we are grateful. The sale will be June 3-5 and I think I may even find a few items for her to sell on my behalf!
Thanks for continuing to pray for us on this journey. That is the most important thing I could ask.