September 27, 2005
I guess we started this journey over 7 years ago when we were married. After 5 years we decided on adoption. Then we had to choose an agency, we tried several but didn't feel comfortable with them. Plus my husband wasn't 100% sure about the whole adoption thing. Ironically one day he heard a commercial on the radio for Bethany Christian Services he decided we should give them a call. We spoke to them and they invited us to attend meeting on international adoption on March 16 (my mom's birthday). We went and felt comfortable with what they had to say. Then we had to decide on a country. After a lot of reading we narrowed it down to Lithuania, Russia, or Ukraine. I should explain we decided against a domestic adoption because the birth parents can take the child back and I don't think we could survive the heartbreak. Our Social Worker helped us decide on Ukraine. Ukraine doesn't give referrals for children, you must travel there and pick one from binders in Kiev. Then go visit the child before committing to adopt. We started our homestudy which took us several months because we had to fill out pages and pages of essays, which Jeff was not happy about and neither was I. When our homestudy was about done we started work on our dossier, which is a collection of paperwork that is submitted to the National Adoption Center in Kiev, Ukriane. Also we applied for our I-171 which is paperwork for The United States Immigration. All of this was sent to Grand Rapids (head quarters for Bethany) in the beginning of April 2005. They shipped it to a translator who then shipped it to our Facilitators in Kiev. They were to submitt it in May. But there is no rhyme or reason to how the NAC accepts dossiers. So in August we had to update our documents because the notaries and apostilles on them were starting to expire. We waited for our Registration Letter to arrive-it never has. On September 21, the Ukrainian Government put a temporary moratorium on new dossiers-which means they are not accepting anymore. After several frantic calls to our SW we found out in an email that we did get registered before the moratorium. So we figured (according to everything we had heard and read) that we wouldn't be traveling to Ukraine until early spring of 2006. Surprisingly on September 26, Jeff received a phone call at work telling us we have an Oct 7, 2005 appointment. That gives us little time to get ready. Yikes! So that is where we are.