January 7th, 2008
It's is official! We are going to try to adopt Matthew's brothers. Our homestudy is almost done, we have filed our I600A(petition for an orphan visa) with US Immigration, and I am working on our dossier (collection of notarized and apostilled documents needed by the Ukrainian Government to approve us to adopt).

We still haven't learned anything about Alex-except we think he is 11. We know Vasya is 14, and will be 15 in January. I do have a photo of Vasya but I don't want to post it on our blog. So if you want to see it -email me and I will send it to you. Matthew looks so much like Vasya. In fact when I ask him who the picture (Of Vasya) is of he says "Me".

The boys will not have a future in Ukraine if they remain there. Most orphans age out of the system at 16 and can not work until 18. So most die of starvation, drugs or suicide by the age of 21. We knew that Matthew had two siblings when we adopted him. We have been praying that God would lead us to them if they needed us. THEY NEED US! We are hoping to be able to travel to Odessa, Ukraine sometime in 2008 to adopt them. We need to save a LOT($25,000 or more) of money, collect a lot of documents, and pray that things will go in the right direction.

I have added a donation button of the sidebar of our blog, we are collecting things for a rummage this spring, I am teaching piano lessons, and working at Scott and Angie's hunting lodge http://www.mriveroutdoors.com/. If anyone has suggestions for us, let me know.