Connections

Why Kazakhstan? For the past 11 years God has woven a beautiful tapestry for our family with Kazakhstan. It started one January when I was feeling stagnant in my Christian walk. I fasted and prayed that God would bring something into my life that would give me a jump start. A week later I was invited by a group from the church that I grew up in to go on a medical mission trip to Karaganda, Kazakhstan. I went on this mission trip in August of 1998 and it changed my life! On this trip I was able to cuddle and love on a little abandoned baby at the hospital that subsequently was adopted by a family in Florida. This little one named Karina planted the seed in my heart to adopt an orphan from Kazakhstan. In October of 1998 my sister and her husband felt called to missions. They tried to go to South America but I just laughed at them and said "You're going to Kazakhstan". They ended up in Seryegevka, Kazakhstan and have been living there for 6+ years now. Over the past 11 years our family has organized and hosted 3 groups of students from the Kaz American English school in Karaganda. We have a Kazak exchanged student daughter that lived with us from 2000-2001 that we have kept in contact with that is blessing us with a granddaughter in late August. She currently lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In 2003 we hosted a 7 year old from Ust Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan through a program called Kidsave. We fell in love with Galina and have pursued adopting her and her siblings since her visit. We currently have a beautiful 17 year old young lady from Atbasar, Kazakhstan that we are sponsoring so she can live in a safe home and attend school. Mark and I have gone together to Kazakhstan to my sister's village once to help with a project and I have returned to her village 3 other times to help with humanitarian aid and the last time to start teen small groups in their church. We have a friend from our church that married an American that is from Ust Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan. We have fallen in love with the people and culture of Kazakhstan and claim many people on the "other side of the world" as family.

OK, there is no such place as Frankfurt, DE so maybe that means our dossier is in Frankfurt, Germany. That's what I'm going to believe since that's closer to Astana and it's been there all day without moving. And believe me I've checked numerous times.

Details

Sometimes we get so caught up in details. International adoption really brings out my insecurities. We were excited on Tuesday when we were told that our dossier had been approved and was on it's way to Astana. Since then I have been checking our FedEx account several time a day to track it. It hasn't shown up. I have imagined that our precious packet of documents has been sitting on someone's desk hidden under other things. Don't they know we're in a hurry????? Finally, today I emailed our ever so patient agency director and asked her if our dossier was in transit. She very graciously sent me a tracking number. I keep telling myself that "it's in God's hands" and then I try to take it back and start to worry. What am I thinking/doing??? Currently our dossier is in Frankfurt, DE and expected to arrive in Astana on June 9th. Yeah, we are getting there step by step.

T Shirt Fundraiser

An artist friend of ours has designed a pic for a tshirt. We are going to sell them to family and friends to help raise money for an orphanage donation. They are $12.00 each. If you want one please let me know. On the back we have put Romans 8:25...But if we look forward to something we don't have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently.

Dossier Approved!!

We just received notice from our agency that our dossier has been approved and is on it's way to the MFA in Astana! It took 4 weeks and 5 days for it to be approved. From looking at other blogs I think this is unusual for our agency. We didn't have any questions or request for additional documents so aren't sure why it took this long. God's time!! This is the point in our adoption journey that things fell apart 4 years ago. Please pray with us that this time we will be able to get our LOI and bring the girls home.

Prayer Requests:
Igor and Sasha will give us permission to adopt their sisters.
Tanya will be open to becoming part of a family again after 9 years in the orphanage.
Galina won't be mad at us for taking so long to get her home.
Our dossier will make it through the ministries quickly so we can get the girls home before the end of the summer.

Received Info

We have been asking for info on our girls for a couple of months. We had an age on Tanya and the info that we have on Galina is 4 years old. We received the following today from Maeven. Alexandr is actually Sasha the boy that we tried to adopt with Galina 4 years ago. Please pray that he gives permission for us to bring the girls home.

the coordinator says that she checked on the girls, they are fine, they study well, they are doing great, but they are in different orphanages.

The coordinator will have to drive 200-250 kilometers to a rural area in order to find their brother Alexandr, she plans to do it soon, probably early June. After this trip it will be more or less clear if the adoption of the girls will be possible.

We will keep you updated.

Our middle son Nichol left with his best friend Chris for a summer job of a lifetime. They are going to be trip leaders at Camp Chief Ouray in Winter Park, Colorado. Nichol has been a camp counselor at Camp Chief Ouray for 2 summers. This is Chris' first time there. They have both completed 4 years of college and have 1 year left before they have to enter the "real" world of work. They will take groups of 14-16yr. old for a week at a time either backpacking, biking, white water rafting, sea kayaking, etc. Both of these young men are tons of fun and bring energy to any place they are. These kids don't know what they're in for. They will have a camp experience like no other.

Still Waiting

Our dossier went to the Kazakhstan Embassy 4 weeks ago this Thursday. We've been told that it should be approved this week. Last week our adoption worker suggested that we read other blogs to get an idea on how everyone's process goes. I have been doing this and went back to look at the time frames for approval once the dossier got to the embassy. I didn't find any families that their dossier didn't clear the embassy in less than 3 weeks from AA. Some of those even had to submit additional information. We aren't sure what's going on with ours but it's getting pretty frustrating. When we ask our agency they tell us we need to be patient. Please pray for us as we continue to trust that this will all come about in God's time.

4 Years Ago Today

Four years ago today my husband finally joined me on our family's journey to adoption. This was after 7 years of me thinking that we should adopt and many fights, intense discussions, begging and tears. I had finally given the fight over to God in January and KNEW that if he truly was calling our family to adoption he would change Mark's mind. On Mother's Day morning Mark sat me down on our front porch with sun shining on us and said to me, "I need to tell you something. Let's go get the kids". We began our dossier the next day and then our journey came to an abrupt halt in September of the same year. We were sure that it was over and then 6 months ago we were given information and had several things happen that prompted us to resume our journey. We are walking forward trusting that God will continue to guide our steps to our children that are waiting in Kazakhstan and that we are listening and faithful.