Our Travel Dates!

We got our travel dates last Wednesday, November 21st. It was the day before Thanksgiving so it was very hard to get things set up for our trip in just the few hours I had before offices closed down for the rest of the week. I spent a full 3 hours on the phone trying to find some kind of flight for our travel dates. They wanted us leaving on the 1st or 2nd of January and coming home on Jan.12th. The only flight I was able to get was going to take us through Russia, which was going to cause us to get a third visa. That doesn't seem like much of a dilemma, but once you add up the days, getting three visas in a month seemed impossible, long enough during the Holidays. Also this flight would of got us there at 6:30am in the morning of Jan. 4th and we were scheduled to pick up Turat and be to the embassy for an appointment in the same day. We would of been exhausted traveling for over 40 hours and then instantly getting our son and trying to stay awake for another 14 hours. Plus doing that flight would not allowed any time for any kind of delay in our flights. I prayed all weekend about the situation and everything got put on hold until today. One of the travel agencies that I have been working with called and had another option for us. They had a flight leaving on Dec. 31st which wouldn't take us through Russia, so we would only have to get the two visas. So I booked that flight and sent off our passports to get our visas right away. I feel like a huge burden has been lifted off of me. Praise God that everything worked out! We may even be able to get Turat on Jan. 2nd instead of Jan.4. I can't wait to meet him!!!!

Gifts for Turat!

We sent off a care package for our son. I have been working on a cloth book for Turat. I wanted to send him something that had pictures of us, so he could be familiar with our faces. I also wanted to put our voices on something, so he could also be familiar with our voices. So I put inside the book under a family picture a voice activated button that can be pushed and me, Cain, and our girls all said Hi to Turat on it. Below is some of the pictures in the book. It may be all we ever have left of the book. Were not sure if we will ever see the book again. Our agency warned us that anything that gets sent to the orphanages may not be there when we get to Kyrgyzstan. We also sent some throw away cameras, that I'm hoping they will take pictures of Turat for us over the next month. We also sent him some clothes, toys and a Christmas present, since we wont be there for Christmas. I'm quite curious as to what will happen to everything. I put some instructions in Russian so hopefully that will help. We will see!!

Our Court Hearing!

Finally the day of our court hearing arrived. We were nervous about our court hearing since some of our paper work expired ( even though they said it would be excepted because it was submitted to the courts before it expired). Kyrgyzstan is 10 hours ahead of us so we spent yesterday evening praying with our kids before bed, since the court hearing would technically be happening while we were sleeping. We had to leave it in God's hands because only he could be there in court. Our agency has an office in Kyrgyzstan and there was someone from their agency that represented us in court and acted as power of attorney in our places. I finally heard word from our case worker this afternoon that everything went great and everything went through without any problems. That was like music to my ears!!! There is a 30 day waiting period until everything is legally on paper, and then we can fly to get him. We are waiting for our travel dates, which they are thinking will be sometime in the beginning of January. We should know that later in the week. I did get new measurements of Turat. He is almost up to 11 and a half pounds. He is so tiny! Cain is already planning out his food when he gets home.

Court Date Being Pushed Off

I got an email from our agency today, and I guess our court hearing has been pushed off until Monday the 19th. I'm a little bummed because that will push off our trip to get Turat until the beginning of January, but God knows best. It is so hard to get something in your mind and then not have it happen. I was planning on spending my Christmas with Turat, but I guess we will just have to make our own Christmas memories when we get home. It may work out best this way. I was nervous thinking of traveling through the busiest time of the year, and the airline tickets were not going to be cheap. Anyways, pray that we can get this court date on Monday and everything will go through smoothly.

We Got The Court Date!

Finally, we got a call from our case worker letting us know that we have a court date which will be this Friday, November 16th. We thought it would be weeks before the court date was going to happen, so we are so excited that it is already scheduled for this week. We pray that everything goes well on Friday, and our case doesn't get pushed off until the following week. Please pray for our travel dates. We could be traveling right through Christmas to New Years. They have to check into all the particulars due to the holidays, and we have to check into the flights to be sure we can even get one. We just want God's will to be done, whatever that may be.

More Good News!

Last night I got home after spending a whole day with Megan, having girls day out, because she didn't have any school, and I found another email from my caseworker. I always get so nervous opening them up, because so much of what she tells us affects our lives. Anyways, there has been some sort of Holiday in Kyrgyzstan, and the courts have been closed for three days, so still no word on our court date. She is hoping to know that next Monday. However, she did tell me that she found out that our paper work should be good in court even though it is expiring this week. I guess since they submitted it to the court before it expired they are going to accept it. They had to look into this because this is the first time this has happened to any of the families that are adopting in Kyrgyzstan. We are so relieved that we will not have to go through the 5 step process again to get this paper work redone. We are one step closer to bringing home our Turat! We just need that court date now!!

Good News!

I got an email today from my case worker, and she said we were approved for one trip. This has been something that we have been praying about since this summer. When we originally started the adoption process there was a one trip requirement. This summer the Ministry of Education in Kyrgyzstan made some changes to the adoption program. One of the changes was that some families may need to make two trips. The first trip you would go to see the child and then if you still accepted your referral a court date would be scheduled. Thirty days after the court date you would then go back to pick up the child. Our fear was that they may require two trips for us and that would mean prolonging bringing home our baby plus the extra expenses. I started worrying about this when we first heard of the two trip requirement in some cases, but then I knew, I just had to give it over to God and he would prevail. God so did prevail, and we are just rejoicing. We are now waiting to see if they will accept our paper work, with some of it expiring this week, we are not sure what will happen since it is already trying to be processed in their court system. We should hear word on that soon. Once again we are hoping they will just push everything through the way that it is, because if we have to redo paper work, that could hold things up by several weeks to a month. Once again God is in control!! We just can't wait to see what God is going to do!