Wednesday, September 22, 2004

September 22 2004 - Beginning the adoption process

Hi Folks! This web page is our not-so-frilly diary of our progress towards obedience to God's calling for us to adopt children. If you're reading this, then you already know the basics, but here they are again.

We've not been able to conceive naturally, or through modern drugs or IVF. So, with God's blessing, we are proceeding with the international adoption process to adopt 2 children from Kazakhstan. We don't know anything about our children, except that they will be somewhere between 6 months and 3 years old when we adopt them.

Below is a log of sorts which documents our adventure to date, starting in May 2004.

Earlier this year (2004), we contacted a friend of a friend of Angel's from her Bible study (BSF) in Denver. This friend, Karla, works for "Friends of Children of Various Nations, Inc." (FCVN, for short), which is an international adoption agency, and Karla specializes in the adoption programs of Russia and Kazakhstan.

We made the decision to go forward in early May, and God confirmed this decision many times between then and Father's day, which this year was June 20. We have avoided Mother's Day church celebrations for the past few years beause it was simply too painful. We didn't think anything about Father's Day at Church of The Apostles, but that's when God made it very clear that we no longer had to avoid such celebrations.

"Somewhere in Kazakhstan there are kids of some age waiting for their mom and dad to come get them. We don't know who they are, how old they are, or where they are, or where they are from, but I am their Daddy and Angel is their Mommy. We must now wait for God's appointed time until we meet them, but we already love them."


Since then we have prayed simply for God to love, protect, and provide for our children.

We started the Home Study the next day, and were approved for the adoption of 2 children on July 2, 2004. We now have an enourmous folder (well organized by Angel) full of paperwork for various governmental agencies, who now know more about us than we really want them to know.

We also had to conduct some trickery, since we didn't want to tell certain family members over the phone, but rather in person. Angel had to tell a little white lie to get my Congolese birth certificate from my mom. Well, we ARE going to put together a serious family album! We finally visited Midge & Roscoe in Lenox, MA on the weekend of our 11th wedding anniversary, and dropped the news on them over dinner the first night. Though they've been grandparents for twenty years, they took the news very well.

We tried to use similar trickery to get in front of Caroline, but we may have gone too far there. The conversation went, "Caroline, I just stayed with our parents for three days...and we REALLY need to talk!" Well, she didn't sleep much for a couple of days, and I couldn't be the source of more stress for her, so we did tell her on the phone. Now she is very excited to be Auntie C-Line!!

We submitted our full application to "Immigration" (formely INS, now DHS, CIS) in early August. Last week, Sept 15, we got a letter from Immigration. My youthful indiscretions have finally come back to haunt me. The first thing they ask when you start the adoption process is, "Have you ever been arrested?" You can say no, but if they find out otherwise, your adoption application stops right there. So, I 'fessed up, and completely documented my arrest for Possession of Alcohol by a minor in the fall of 1985 in Conyers, GA, at a high school football game.

Interestingly, the state of GA, from whom we had to collect a criminal background check three different times, shows no arrests at all. Even more interestingly, the City of Conyers, where the offense took place, purges their records every six years. Since my idiocy occured 19 years ago, there is no record of it at all. So, when Immigration demands a "Certified Court Disposition" for the arrest, we thought we were stuck. God provided an old friend and neighbor in the Conyers records department, and we were able to get a notarized document that affirms the official lack of record of my arrest. That letter was sent to Immigration on Sept 22, so we expect a slight delay in the processing of our adoption application.

As of today, Sept 22, we expect to receive our "referral" from Karla around the end of November, depending mostly on when Immigration approves our application. We will spend 4-6 weeks in Kazakhstan, and come home with our two children.