15 днів до України

Translation: 15 days until Ukraine. It is official, we will be boarding our flight to Kiev, Ukraine on August 2 at 11:30 am out of New Orleans, LA. It's surreal to think that over a year ago we began this journey to follow after God's will to have pure and undefiled religion through adoption and in 18 days we may see the face of the child/children in a picture that he as preordained for us to adopt long before we ever knew we would. We truly pray that God will gives us peace and clarity in this process. We truly know this is one of the largest steps of faith that we can take but have complete comfort in how sovereign our God truly is. 

I wanted to thank you all for your prayers and support and for the continuing encouragement that you have all bestowed on our family. The adoption process brings out the best and the worst in people, it has been a long road filled with plenty of doubters, skeptics, and even those encouraging us not to adopt, but thankfully we serve a God who is bigger than those nay-sayers. Our prayer is that God will soften their hearts and when they see the hope and the joy in that child's face, that they are no longer orphaned but have a family who loves them and show them what the Gospel looks like more than just tell them, they will embrace the gospel calling to care for those 143 million orphans in the world.

So pray, pray, pray that there will be a clear connection between us and the child and that the Love that we have for them, which is truly an effect of the love God has given us, will be clear. Even more so, pray that in a month and a half from now we will be landing in Monroe, LA with a child that gets to come home to their family for the first time. In which at the airport you are all invited to celebrate with us this amazing culmination of the Gospel calling for our family.

May God be glorified in all of this for it is He who is the one who is truly inspirational, not us.

SDA appointment! AMEN!

These past few days have felt like weeks with the anticipation of our email from Kostya our translator/facilitator that would tell us what day we had to be in Ukraine. I woke up around 4:30 this morning and immediately checked Kate's email and began praying that we would find out our SDA appointment date today. After checking her email at least every 30 minutes this entire day we received the email we have been waiting for:

Hello Kate,
I just got letter of invitation for you.
The appointment August 5th.

Kind wishes,
Kostya

Can you believe it! It's hard to believe that last year this time we were just beginning this process and now we actually have a target date to be in Ukraine. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Pray harder than you have for us, because this is where we truly have to rely on God to guide us to the child/children that he desires for us to make apart of our family. Please pray that the appointment goes smoothly, we find a child, and that everyone involved feels sure that we are supposed to Adopt this child and give them a family.

Its only 26 Days or 631 hours until we will be at the SDA in Ukraine!

Rounding Third

For those of you who haven't heard our paperwork was submitted successfully to Ukraine and we are now waiting to hear when our State Department of Adoption (SDA) appointment will be. So the next step in this process is actually going to Ukraine to find our child. We are anticipating this date to land somewhere between the last week of July to the First few weeks of August. We encourage you all to pray that God will lead us to the child he has for us, that the SDA therapist will deem us suitable to adopt, that the Orphanage director will see our hearts and allow us to adopt the child in their orphanage, and that the child will have an instant connection with us and will decide to come home with us. This whole process has taught us that no matter the cost we must follow God's call, that no matter the negative resistance we have a God who is stronger than our ability, that despite the doubters the Gospel through adoption is worth the sacrifice, and that through the struggle our Gods sovereignty is at work in his children.

Father, thank you for adopting us as your children! We did not know you and were fatherless but you loved us enough to send your Son to pay the debt owed to our sins, so that we may be your children. Sola Deo Gloria! To you alone be all the glory!

We are still missing a part of our family and can't wait for the day we can take a picture of all of us together.

More Paperwork

On May 30^th, we received an email from Konstantin stating there was an issue with our marriage license. Our good friend Richard Harbison picked up a copy form Purvis courthouse and met Casey in Magee, MS. Casey rushed to get it notarized, apostilled and mailed to Ukraine. Then on June 11^th, another email from Konstantin stating there was yet another issues with one of our clearance papers.  One of the documents had blue ink on it. We received the email at 11 p.m. and were in Jackson with the corrected documents notarized and apostilled by 4 p.m.  It takes 7 days to fedex and 7 days to translate the paperwork. We have 14 days till the court date, no rush!

We have trusted God during his calling for us to adopt, we have trusted God when he chose Ukraine, and we can remain calm because we know that God is in control. Praise God for the comfort of our heavenly father. 

Very Blessed

Much has happen since December! God blessed us with a beautiful little girl, Chandler Grace Williams. She was born on March 16th and was 6 pounds 15 ounces, and 191/2 inches long. She had phenomena and stayed in the NICU for seven days but now she doing great. We absolutely love being parents.

Starting in April began our frustrating long journey to collect our dossier (paperwork). Our dossier can only be six months old so we had to update everything. In the middle of all the excitement of having Chandler home, we were back and forth to various offices getting our blood work done, tax assessor letter, employee letters, petition to adopt, obligation to adopt, power of attorney, criminal background checks, well you get the point a lot of documents.

After collecting all these documents we turned them in to be reviewed. I can’t tell you how many times we heard “everything’s perfect but…”. It was a mad rush, which lasted well over a month with many trips down to Baton Rouge and to Jackson. We finally sent our dossier off May 20th to our Ukrainian translator/facilitator.

On June 24th our facilitator will present our dossier to the Ukrainian Courts. If all goes well we should receive a date to fly to Ukraine within 20 days. If any of our dossier has any errors then we will be rejected and could have to wait up to a year to reapply. We are praying that God will be over this whole process.

Two or Three more months and we should be in Ukraine to meet our second child. Going from diapers to T-Ball in six months. Very Exciting.

Winter Update

So we are in the idle period of the adoption right now, we have to wait and fill out our papers for Ukraine later because when you turn everything it can not be more than 6 months from due date. We are still trying to raise money and pray you will continue to pray for provision. We received a email today informing us that we were not approved for our loan through abba fund, which gives us another road bump, but we know in who we believed in and know he will continue to work a way for us to adopt our child. In other news we have been informed that our newborn due in April will be a girl, so Chandler Grace will be apart of our family this upcoming april, then our adopted child will be apart of our family the end of August, prayerfully. We know that this adoption is not just a preference or a phase it is a calling from God to our family to take care of the orphans in the world. So we hope you will join with us whether it be financially, prayerfully, or any other way you decide. Thank you all so much, and may God bless you and may you celebrate in his coming for our adoption into the family of God this Christmas Season.

Quick Update

We have been approved to adopt from Kiev Ukraine by the United States Government. We also submitted some papers to Ukraine. We have to have our papers submitted by June 24, which means that we should go to Ukraine 30 days after our submittal date which means we should bring home our daughter in August of 2010. Add that to our newborn coming in April and we will be he parents of two in the matter of 9 months.