Please PRAY!

The country our girls are in just announced that it will CLOSE their adoption department July 11 and will remain completely closed for at least three months while they switch to another department.


What does this mean for us?


It means that we MUST get our travel date, get an official referral from the Adoption department that is closing, meet our girls and then get permission from the Adoption Department to go to court....all before July 11.


PLEASE, PLEASE PRAY FOR US that we will be issued a travel date and complete all the necessary steps before the closure.  Please pray for all the other families in this process.  

Precious lives are on the line.

25 years ago today...

...God blessed Jeff and I as we gave birth to our first child, Wesley.   How can 25 years have already gone by?!?  We are so proud God picked us to be your parents.  You are an amazing young man.  I look forward  to see where He leads you on the rest of your life's journey.

 Happy Birthday Wesley!

SUBMITTED today!!!!!!

We just received the news that our dossier was submitted today to the adoption authorities in the country that our girls are in!  WooHoo!!!


Now we wait for our appointment to go visit with the authorities and receive their official adoption referral for our girls.  We expect to travel within the next 3-4 weeks...again, WooHoo!

God is so incredibly good to move us along so quickly.  Thank You, Thank You, Thank YOU!!

Home 5 months

Matthew and Michael have been home five months.  It really is incredible how far they both have come in just a short period of time. 

Look whose WALKING!

Michael!

Look whose pulling up to STAND!

Matthew!

Look whose HAPPY!

 

 

Look whose LOVED!!!

I-171H RECEIVED...The Golden Ticket!

We received our I-171H Friday, May 6.  That is what we in the adoption community call The Golden Ticket.  It is just a single piece of paper but it is priceless as it holds the lives of two little girls.  Without this one piece of paper, we could not bring home our girls.   I'm so thankful we have it now!!! 

I-171H, (personal info removed for the blog)

This has been a very busy couple of weeks.  We took all of the dossier documents that we had completed to Austin May 4th to be apostilled.  We had a nice trip, got to tour the capital again and arrived back home 19 hours later. Very long, yet quick, trip.

Texas Secretary of State building where we get our paperwork apostilled

Waiting inside the SOS building for apostilles to be finished

In session!  We got to watch a debate on the floor and how Texas laws are made!

Matthew and Michael's first trip to THEIR state capital.  Matthew is looking at the TEXAS sign on the floor of the rotunda in the center of the State Capital.

Cute Kids!!!

Peace officers' memorial just outside of the Capital

Texas State Capital building

45 documents apostilled for our dossier....DONE!

We sent in our I-600A application to USCIS on April 28.  This is an Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition to our government.  They receive it in Texas, process it, send it to MO for more processing, assign an officer to the case, process it some more, then either approve it, reject it or ask for more documentation.  If it is approved, USCIS gives you an I-171H form that officially says your are approved to adopt.  Seems easy enough...but the process is usually V.E.R.Y long taking many, many weeks to complete.  We do not have time on our side for several reasons so I was determined to get through the process in record time and we asked God to show us favor...He did!


The process can be expedited for medical reasons so we went to our Dr.  May 10th to see if he would write a letter for medical expedite for the girls...he did!  We sent that letter to USCIS that very day and then ran over to Congressman Randy Neugebauer's office the next day, May 11th, and spoke to his assistant, Jay, and Jay then called USCIS on our behalf to recommend a medical expedite as well.  Within 5 minutes of Mr. Neugebauer's office calling USCIS, we had an officer assigned to our case.  By noon the next day our I-600A was approved and I had the I-171H in my hands ready to be apostilled.  15 days!  God is good!


Now we just have to get the I-171H and one other document apostilled and we can send our entire dossier to the country our girls are in and wait for the travel date.  Jeff could be traveling in 6-8 weeks if all goes quickly!! 

Ways you can help...

We have had several people ask us how they can help with our expenses for the adoption.  There are several ways to help.


You can simply donate by clicking on the Reece's Rainbow "Donate" button at the top of the side bar.  All donations given through Reece's Rainbow are fully tax deductible and go directly to our adoption. RR gives us this money closer to our travel date.

If you want your donation to come directly to us for immediate expenses, please use our daughter Rachel's fundraiser, found a little lower in the side bar.  These donations are not tax deductible because they go directly to us and not through RR. 


**You can pray....prayer is a HUGE part of raising money.

**You can have a garage sale.


**You can have a bake sale........(Thank you, Dani, for doing this!!!!)


**You can host a 'give-away'.


**You can host a 1K/5K/10K fun run.

You can choose one of our needs below and raise money towards that specific need if that is what you are being called to do.  International adoption is about as expensive as a private domestic adoption.  It usually costs about $25-30,000 to adopt two children from the country we are adopting from.   

We do not pay anything for the children themselves.  We do not pay anything to the government of their country.  ALL expenses all go towards actual adoption costs like paperwork processing, mailings, airfare, hotel accommodations abroad, food, transportation while in-country, facilitation/translations fees, etc.   

Every penny raised is a HUGE blessing.  Tell me which need you are going to cover and I'll mark that need as MET!  Of course, you can also remain anonymous if you wish.

Thank you all so much for your willingness and eagerness to help us rescue our daughters!!!!! 


Our Adoption Needs:


1. $ 200 Homestudy update
2. $ 200 Apostilles
3. $ 300 Medical fees for the girls in-country
4. $ 475 Car Transportation in-country
5. $ 500 postage fees
6. $ 600 Train Transportation in-country
7. $ 700 Food, in-country
8. $ 720 I-600 Fee, in-country
9. $ 800 hotel/apartment in-country
10. $ 808 Visa Application for the girls, in-country
11. $ 890 USCIS fees
12. $ 1,300Passports for the girls, in-country
13. $ 2,335 Initial RR fees
14. $ 10,000 Airfare
15. $ 11,000 facilitation fees, in-country

Total:  $30,468


Some people may wonder WHY are Jeff and I going to all this expense to adopt two little girls in Eastern Europe when there are thousands of children right here in America we could adopt for free through CPS.  There's only one answer to that question:


GOD! 


We have to go where He is calling us this time and He is calling us to this particular country for these particular children.  They are our daughters, and we have to to get them out of there and bring them home.  

Thank you all so much for helping us!

The neatest thing happened today....

We have very little information about Matthew and Michael's early years.  We have no baby pictures of Michael and only a couple of baby pictures of Matthew from RR.

It is customary for the SDA to trade their file baby pictures with adoptive parents if the parents have a current picture of their child.  We did have current pictures of both boys and asked the SDA to trade.  For reasons known only to them, they said no to Jeff.  So Jeff asked if he could take a picture of the baby pictures....again, NO!  Our facilitator went back on our behalf at a later time and he was also told NO!

Our boys SDA baby pictures surfaced again during court and our translator asked the judge if they could trade at that time....again, NO!  The judge told them that the SDA pictures were now part of the court records and were going to be SEALED with the court documents.  There was nothing more for us to do.

FOUR MONTHS LATER...


I am reading through messages on the post-adoption RR support group site and read this:

Pictures for someone??


In going through and organizing all of my paperwork from this last adoption, I
came across some photos that I apparently picked up from the SDA in March 2011.
:) :)

They are pictures of two little boys with Down syndrome. As best I can decipher,
the names on the back of the pictures are (xxxx xxxxx) and the other
picture only has one name--(xxxx)?? They are cute cute little boys and I would
love to get these pictures to their family, so if you know who they belong to
please let me know!
Courtney

I LITERALLY ABOUT FELL OUT OF MY CHAIR!

The names Courtney gave were Matthew and Michael's birth names!   Were these their SDA pictures?  I immediately emailed her and asked if she could scan and email the pictures to me so I could see if they were pictures of Michael and Matthew....

THEY WERE!

Awwwww, they were so tiny.  I just want to scoop up my babies and hold their little selves from those pictures.  I'm so grateful to have baby pictures of them!  God works in mysterious ways, that is for sure!  

 

I-600A...SENT!

We mailed off our I-600A application today at 2:00pm.  Praise God!!  What a relief!  It feels so good to be one step closer to our girls.  

We had a flurry of activity in the previous few days to get to this point.  Our SW worked tirelessly over the entire Easter weekend to complete our homestudy...thank you, Ashley!!!  Then, she got the HS notarized...twice...due to technical difficulties the first time, but she persevered and got it done late last evening and we were able to pick it up so we could mail it off with our I-600A application today.  Whheewww!

While we wait for our I-600A to be processed, we will continue to gather dossier documents, notarize them, have them checked by our RR stateside helper and then have everything apostilled in Austin.  After all that, we mail everything to the country our girls are in and wait for our travel date! 

One step closer to home, baby girls, one step closer to home!!!

Please be in prayer that the we can move quickly.  There are great changes coming very soon in the country our girls are in concerning international adoption and we need divine intervention to get over there before the changes happen.   We will move forward in faith.

Resurrection Day

 Easter!

HOLY RESURRECTION DAY!

The day the Holiest of Holies

ROSE 

from the dead.

HE IS ALIVE!

Alive!  

Our living God!  

THAT is what sets Him apart from all other gods.  Our Heavenly Father chose to come to this Earth in living flesh.  He chose to die a horrendous death on a wooden cross so we could live. All we have to do is choose Him.

Thank you, Father, for giving your life so that we can have eternal life. Thank you for adopting me into your family, grafting me into the Kingdom of God.

Our living God!

Alive!

Easter!

HOLLY RESURRECTION DAY!

THE DAY THE Holiest of Holies

ROSE 

from the dead.

HE IS ALIVE!

John 11:25-26
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

Matthew 27:50-53
And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

Matthew 28:1-10
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."
So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

Mark 16:1-8
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' "
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

13 years ago today....

...one of the neatest people ever created was born!

Happy Birthday, Jason!!

Jason, you have grown into such a neat young man.  I am so proud of the person you are and the strong Christian you are becoming.  I cannot believe 13 years has already passed since God blessed us with you!  You are a treasure and we love you so much!!!

I'm so glad everybody was able to come celebrate your special day with you.  We had a great time!!!

Happy 13th Birthday, Jason!!!!!

Our big delay...Technical difficulities

This will be a pretty technical post, mostly just for me to remember what is going on.  Sorry to bore everyone with technical difficulities...


We have run into a little set-back with our I-600A.  Our HS update is finished and I was fixing to send it to our stateside helper for review before filing it with USCIS, but I decided to call USCIS to check on what documents I needed to send in with our update.  During our conversation, the officer asked me if we had already filed the I-600 and I said we did, after we adopted Matthew and Michael in Dec.  The officer told me we could NOT do a simple update since our I-600 had been filed.  She said two more children could only be added to a current I-171H if we had not already filed the I-600. 

Our SW had called USCIS three different times last week to verify various things for the update and they said we could add two more children, but I guess USCIS thought we had not filed the I-600 yet and we did not know to mention it.  We all assumed we could work off our current I-171H since it is less than 18 months old.  Just miscommunication.

The USCIS officer said HS's must be less than 6 months old when filing a brand new I-600A.  This means we will have to do a new homestudy, not an updated one because our original HS is now 9 months old.  We will also have to get new biometrics done which means waiting for a new fingerprint appointment.  I'm bummed to say the least!

Our SW is so sweet and said that if she hustles, she can get the new HS compiled and finished by early next week.  I'm so thankful she will work on this throughout Easter weekend!!!  Thank you so much, Ashley!!!

So, that is where we stand.  Still compiling our HS.... 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Definitions:


SW... Social Worker
HS...Homestudy
USCIS... Government agency that approves the number of children one can adopt internationally
I-600A...  Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petitions.
I-600... The Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative
I-171H...The Golden Ticket... Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petitions....basically USA's permission for you to adopt   internationally and the number of children approved.

Birthday Boy!

HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY, JUSTIN!!!

You are such a JOY!!!

Rachel and mommy made you a birthday cake... 

 ...and oh, how you loved licking the spoon from the frosting.

Matthew and Michael waited patiently for you to open your presents.

You enjoyed eating your cake!

Everyone enjoyed celebrating your birthday with you!!!

You, Michael and Matthew had a little play time before bed and then off to sleep you went.

Happy 2nd birthday, Justin!  We love you more than words can ever say!!!

Our Girls....

Jeff and I are pleased to announce that we are adopting little miss "Jaclyn" and "Harper"!!!  

They are two beautiful girls in Eastern Europe who both just turned 3 years old.  They are both blessed with an extra 21st chromosome, also known as Down syndrome.  

Oh my!  

Just look at them!!  

They are so beautiful!!!  

We cannot wait to get them home and watch them grow and flourish.  Their little shaved heads hurt my heart so much!  I cannot wait to see them with long flowing locks, running around here being loved unconditionally by all of us.  I know the pictures we have are not the best quality but we are just thrilled to have any pictures!
 

"Jaclyn"

"Harper"

We plan to travel to get the girls later this summer. Any and all prayers for our process are greatly appreciated. Here is a link to our Family Page through Reece's Rainbow. Stop by and take a peek when you get a chance.

http://reecesrainbow.org/sponsorhannon-2

When time runs out...

Time...sometimes it runs out. 

Today is one such day for a precious young lady we call Beautiful.  She ages out today.  Today she becomes too old to adopt.  She KNOWS what this day means.  Her mind is sharp but her body has CP and because of her CP she  is sentenced...for life...to live out her days in an institution in Eastern Europe. 

Nobody came for her in time... 

...and she KNOWS.

I have never met Beautiful, yet she has had such an impact on my life.  I came to know of her through another adoptive mom who DID meet Beautiful and got to know her shining light. 

Beautiful should not be where she is!  Nobody should be where she is!  She should be in a loving home learning about Christ's love, being a teenager, full of hope, full of love and laughter with the promise of a future. 

Please pray for Beautiful that she will find some way to hold on to that spark of life that she has.  Pray a miracle happens in her country and a better life will be in store for her.

We have seen Gods mighty power and how He moves hearts and makes situations turn around when there seems to be no hope.  There is always hope through Christ! 


The answer to solve the world's orphan crisis is CHRIST!  These countries need CHRIST and the social change that will come as a result.

America is not immune.  We need CHRIST.  We have orphans.  We have a 90% abortion rate for babies diagnosed with Down syndrome....90%.  

We need CHRIST!

Today my heart is heavy for Beautiful and the millions of orphans just like her and for the babies who will never be.

My hope lies with CHRIST!

It's final!!!

Our adoption is final!  


Since Michael and Matthew came home on an IR-4 Visa, it is required that we finalize the adoption here in America, basically re-adopt them, in order for them to become US citizens.  Today was the day, exactly 3 months to the day since we brought the boys home.

We went down to the courthouse, briefly met with our dear friend and attorney, along with the Judge,  then answered a few questions and viola....DONE!  It was a very quick and painless proceeding.


We are now legally the proud parents to Matthew and Michael...though we have been their mommy and daddy in our hearts for almost a year since we first laid eyes on them via Reece's Rainbow.