Leaving On A Jet Plane

Well, it looks like a year and a half of paperwork, fingerprinting, sweat and prayer has finally culminated in an actual adoption trip! We are leaving Saturday, Sept 9 for Kazakhstan, a trip that will take approximately 3 days from the time we leave our house and arrive in the region we will be visiting. You would think that with all the time we have had to prepare for this moment to arrive that we would be more prepared. Unfortunately, if you thought that, then you would be quite mistaken! It's funny how everything seems to be happening so fast all of a sudden. For those of you that don't know, here's a little update on how this trip will proceed (or at least how we THINK it will). We will fly into Frankfurt and then into the old capital city of Kazakhstan called Almaty. We will spend the night in Almaty waiting for the next night train to our region. Apparently we will be in a sleeper car and will try to get some rest during that night. When we get off the train, we will immediately go to meet the Minister of Education in our region, who will give the okay to go to the orphanage. Hopefully, we will be able to visit the orphanage that day and identify our child, because the day we meet our child is Day One of the 14 mandatory days of bonding that we must complete before we can apply to go to court. On Day 15 we will apply for court, and hopefully will get a court date within a few days to a week. After court, we will return home and our child will stay in Kazakhstan. I know that sounds kind of rough, and it will be, but the only other option is to have one of us stay in country for another month while our child's visa and passport are processed through the embassy. At the end of that month or so, our child will be able to come home and officially join our family. We are hoping that happens around the beginning of November. What a great holiday season this is going to be!!!! Oh, and did I mention that NO ONE speaks English in Kazakhstan??? They speak Russian and Kazakh. We have been learning basic Russian words and phrases, but really not enough to get around. Luckily, we will have a team of facilitators to assist us, including a driver, a translator, and people to help move the court process along.

Now you may be thinking, "Why on earth would a family that already has three kids do something like this? Are you crazy?" Well - probably! Actually, though, here is our story.....Jeff and I have been married for six years this week. Both of us have been married before, and I have the privilege of being the mother of my two oldest children, Amber and Mitchell, who are 11 and 10. There is nothing on this earth that I love more than being their mother. Four years ago Jeff and I had the privilege of having a child together, Jacob, who is also the love of our life. Each of my pregnancies were progressively harder and higher risk, and I had a lot of complications with the last one. In fact, I found out during the adoptive medical exams that I actually have heart damage from my last delivery, and I have to take medication to control it. It turns out it would be too dangerous to have another pregnancy. Even before I knew about the cardiac issue, I knew that another pregnancy was really not healthy for me. Still, I continued to have these little proddings from God that told me I was not done having children. On Mother's Day 2005, we went to the Sunday evening service at our church, Saddleback Church. We had never been to the Sunday evening service before, and it turns out that was the only service that weekend (there are normally 6) that had a special performance by a group of children from Africa that happened to all be orphans. My heart immediately went out to them, but I pushed that thought away because I knew that Jeff didn't want any more children - or at least that was what he had been telling me all along. In the car ride home, Jeff turned to me and said, "You know what we need to do, don't you?" I thought he meant that we needed to go to the grocery store, or stop for gas. Instead he said, "We need to adopt an orphan from Africa." I was floored. For those of you that know my husband, you know that he spent the first couple years of Jacob's life talking about how he could never go through another pregnancy because it was so rough for him! He went on to say that he was sure that he had had an epiphany from God at that moment and was never more sure of anything in his life. Me on the other hand, I was not so sure. Lucky for me, I am married to a man that has absolutely no doubts when it comes to following God's prodding and plan for our life. The next day he spent the day researching adoption agencies and international adoption. He found out that adoption from Africa is almost impossible because of government instability. He found an agency to meet with and set up a meeting for that very Friday. During that week, I was still unsure, but prayed about it every day. On the day prior to our meeting with the adoption agency, we had still not discussed the issue with the kids. I had wanted to wait to get more information and "be sure". We were all sitting around after dinner when out of the blue, Mitchell said to me, "Mommy, do you think we could buy a baby sister?" Mind you, Mitchell knows where babies come from - between his sister and brother at our house and his two brothers and sister at his dad's house, he's pretty informed about how siblings come along. I started laughing and said, "No Mitchell, you can't buy a baby", but I stopped mid-sentence. Jeff and I looked at each other and decided we had our opportunity to talk to the kids about this. To my surprise, they were all very excited about the prospect. No, we weren't thinking about buying a child, but adoption does cost money, so we explained that part. That was really the encouragement that I needed to know that this truly was what God had planned for our family. The boys immediately requested a brother, and Amber immediately requested a sister. We had been told that most families that adopt request girls, so we decided to request a boy just because we felt that God just wanted us to do this. Just like any pregnancy, though, WE don't really get to choose, so we are open to whatever the plan happens to be. We did not request an infant because we felt that there are so many families that have not had the privilege of rocking a baby to sleep each night like we have, and there are plenty of older children just waiting for a home.

All through this process, there have been countless "coincidences" (probably not coincidences as much as God's hand guiding the process). The adoption agency we chose just so happens to be run by a couple from our church that handled the adoption for the children's pastor. We have "accidentally" met other families that just so happen to be in the same process that have become friends and support for us. The country that we started with, Ukraine, shut down to adoptions midway through our process forcing us to switch to Kazakhstan, a country that our church just so happens to have a lot of contacts with, hopefully making the process a little easier. Too many things to list, but enough to make us sure that this is what we were meant to do.

One thing that we have definitely learned throughout this process so far is that NOTHING is going to go the way WE plan it. Actually, at this point, I am looking forward to how God is going to weave this process to work out perfectly. Be prepared to hear that the outcome is very different than what we think at this point, or at least that the process will end up being very different. We are ready for anything and are immensely glad that my parents are going to be with us for the first week or so of the trip to help out with Jacob, who will be with us for the entire trip. Amber and Mitchell will be home going to school, so we have set up this blog to help them participate in the process, too. We will even be able to do some video conferencing with them so my heart doesn't break from being apart from them for so long. We should be able to update our blog daily while in Kazakhstan, so we can keep our family and friends updated on our progress and even post pictures of our child. Stay tuned!