Sunday, July 16, 2017

What's Next?

Now that we have accepted the referral for our child what happens next? Well, a lot. If everything were to go flawless this is what the process looks like for us: this week our facilitator will submit everything to the State Department of Adoption in Kiev again, this time for our specific child. We then have to wait for them to approve our dossier again before we can get a court date from the local SDA here in Odessa. We appreciate prayers and good thoughts during these next few weeks as the SDA reviews all of our paperwork again. Many families have run into setbacks and hurdles during this phase of the process this year.  It will likely be at least 3 weeks before we get a court date (we really hope not longer than that). After court there is a mandatory 10 day waiting period before we can officially take our child from the orphanage. Once we have them with us, we can apply for their passport, visa, get medical clearances, birth certificate, etc. Most of those things have to be done one at a time, waiting for each thing to be complete before being able to move on to the next. Eventually we will have everything we need in hand and can fly home with our little one!

Right now please pray that our paperwork will move smoothly and quickly through the SDA review process and that we can have a court date within 3 weeks from now. One step at a time is all we can think about and we are blessed to have two wonderful facilitators working with us and doing ALL of the paperwork and leg work for us so that we can focus on bonding with our child. We are able to visit the orphanage for a total of 4 hours per day in the morning and evening, Monday-Friday, and for 2 hours on Saturday mornings. Since today was Sunday and we weren't able to visit, we went into downtown Odessa instead (where there is much more to do, see, and eat than the area we are in).  All we could think about and talk about though was our little one and how we can't wait for Monday morning to come. We can already tell the wait to have our child with us 24/7 is going to be agonizingly long, but definitely worth the wait!

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