Oh the Places you will go...

Oh the places you will go... Who would have ever thought where all we would go with God to get our kids. We have known from the beginning that adoption was God's plan for our family. And we knew after visiting Russia in 2005, that God put this country in our hearts for a reason. It has been a long time since our first visit to St. Petersburg with SAC in April of 2005, and it has been along time since we started our paperwork to adopt. During the last almost 4 years God has continuously blessed us. He has given us patience as the landscape of international adoption has changed, peace knowing that all of this is part of His plan for us, and perseverance to stay the course during all of the changes. In December, we learned that, if we were willing, our agency had a new to them region that could really change our time frame. So now we are no longer going to be adopting from St. Petersburg, but from a region in far east Russia, Khabarovsk. The time from registration to adoption could be 7-8 months sooner than in St. Pete. And in God's never ending sense of humor, we already know somebody from that region.

Please bare with us as we learn to blog. Neither of us are the best at opening up, but we want a way that you our friends and family can keep up with our progress, and know how to specifically pray for us. One of the things that we will need you to bare with us on is that our child or children, (yes, we are approved for 2 if they are available) will have their own story to tell. We won't be able to share their given names with you until they are ours, so please don't ask. We will come up with something you can call them in your prayers.

Now, where are we, and how can you pray. Where we are is completing phase 1 of our dossier. Once it is approved, it will be sent to Khab where it will be translated and registered. Based on the information we have regarding our timeline, it is very likely that our child has been born. The overriding prayer is that as they lay in their beds in Russia, that our kids feel the hand of God. There typically are not enough hours in the day for care givers in the orphanage to give each child all of the attention and contact that they need. So we pray that God will do that for us.

We will share more as we can. Thanks again for praying for us, and our kid as we await our first trip to meet them. Oh the places we will go...