In-country Post #1: ALL THREE ADOPTIONS GRANTED!!!!!

Wooohooo!!!!  God is so wonderful and mighty!!  He has been in control this whole time and has provided everything that we have needed to make our adoptions a reality.  His power and strength was shown and His spirit was felt by David and me in an Ukrainian court today.

The judge granted all three of our adoptions at 1:25 pm local time (5:25 am CST)!!!!!  It is official, we will be bringing our beautiful children home to start their new life with us:  THEIR FAMILY!!!  They are now brothers and sister and have two more brothers waiting at home for them.

I will give more details later on, but I could not wait to post this!!  I'm still an emotional wreck...the good kind of emotional wreck, though!!!

Stateside Post # 4: The BEST News Out of Ukraine!!!!

WE RECEIVED NOTICE EARLY THURSDAY MORNING THAT WE HAVE A COURT DATE!!!

We will be leaving for Ukraine this coming Tuesday morning and will arrive in our children's region early Wednesday evening.  We will be in court on Thursday at 11 am (3 am CST)!!!!  If all goes as planned, we should be home with our three beautiful children by mid-October!!!

We were hoping that we would be home with our children by Trenton's 3rd birthday on September 27, but we have prayed for God's timing.  Now we will get to have a mini-celebration with him after court on the 29th and let him know he will have a HUGE birthday party when we get home.  We also plan to give Teague and Maclayne belated birthday parties in the weeks to come; we may even give them birthday parties every month for a while; we have missed birthday parties to make up!

Oh, God is sooo wonderful, powerful, mighty, loving, faithful, amazing....  David and I still cannot believe that He loved us enough to give us the most precious gift of four adopted sons and one adopted daughter.  Words cannot express how blessed and honored we are that four of the children He gave us have Down syndrome.

I will post more details when they come about.  Please continue to pray for us and both our children in Ukraine and our children here.  Thank you for giving us such heartfelt support over the past months.

Stateside Post # 3: Better News from Ukraine!!!

Praise God, the Perfector of our faith!!  We received an email yesterday concerning our very soon return trip to Ukraine.  As I stated in the last update, there were some issues with a few documents for our children that needed to be ironed out before the SDA would sign off on the adoptions.  Our WONDERFUL facilitators in Ukraine worked very hard and diligently to straighten everything out in the shortest amount of time as possible.

Last week, the corrected documents were submitted to the SDA for permission to adopt our beautifully precious Maclayne, Teague, and Trenton.  Our facilitators advocated for both our children and us.  The SDA signed off on the documents and approved us to adopt our babies!!!

Our dossier and other paperwork are being submitted the region courts where our children are.  We hope to get notice of our court date by week's end.  There is a very real chance that we will be returning to Ukraine the latter part of next week.  We are so anxious to hold each of our children in our arms and once again smother them with hugs and kisses.  With God's Provision, this time next month we will either be on our way back to San Antonio with OUR children or already home.

God is so wonderful and mighty.  We praise and thank Him several times daily for the gift of all five of our children:  Copeland Shane, Silas Eli, Teague Josiah, Maclayne Faith, and Trenton James.  David and I are so proud of our family and we love telling others about our adoption journey.

I'm still in shock that God has given me a daughter when I only wanted boys.  And, I admit, I am EXCITED about it!!! 

By the way, below are the "before" pictures of our children; the only ones that we had for several months.  Wow, soooo much has changed!!!!  

Teague Josiah - NO longer "Igor"

Maclayne Faith - NO longer "Leeza"

Trenton James - NO longer "Tihon"

Stateside Post # 2: Info from Ukraine

There were some technical issues that needed to be taken care of before our dossier and other required court documents could be submitted to the courts.  Another reason for the court delay was because the judges in our children’s region had been out on holiday.

We just received word from our facilitators in Ukraine that our dossier and other court documents should be submitted to the courts sometime next week.  If everything is submitted next week as planned, we will more than likely get notice of a court date by the end of the week.  This is pure speculation on my part, but our court date could be sometime the first week of October.  There is also a chance that the court date could be during the last week of September.

We definitely want our court date to be the soonest possible, but we are praying for God's will and timing.  Please pray that His timing IS for our court date to be the last week in September.  And, with God's grace, we should be home with our precious Sunshine, Musical Daddy's Boy, and Escape Artist by this time next month!!! 

Thank you for all of the wonderful prayers lifted up on our family's account.  We are so blessed to have so many wonderful friends play such a significant role in our adoption journey.  We love all of y'all!

This was taken during our last visit before we returned to the States

Beautiful Maclayne during the last visit

The boys during the last visit

Stateside Post # 1: Waiting...waiting...waiting...

Since we have been home, I have sat at my computer countless times trying to wrap my head around what exactly needs to be said in this blog update, only to walk away feeling overwhelmed at the task before me.  The reason that it has taken me so long to write an update was because words that usually flowed so freely from my mind, were not there…at least not any good ones.  Ask David and he will tell you, "my wife is a true English and Writing teacher who loves to write, but at the same time takes the written word very seriously.  She is also, sometimes to a default, a perfectionist.  She will not allow anyone to read her writings unless all i's have been dotted and all t's have been crossed [I often add the words "both literally and figuratively" to that last statement – thank you very much!!!]." 

Before I continue, I must make it perfectly clear that David is in no way at fault for me not updating our blog.  He has dropped a million subtle hints about updating the blog since we landed back on American soil.  Of course, these hints did not matter because I have been in search of the perfect piece since September 4^th and remained adamant about not posting anything until words would flow from my thoughts.  I wonder why I have yet to complete the novel series (yes, you just read SERIES) I have been working on for a few years now.   All of that changed this morning…

This morning was the first day of a women’s Bible study over Jonah that my church is having.  I really wanted to join the Bible study, but I knew it wouldn’t be very practical since David and I are in the middle of adopting Teague, Maclayne, and Trenton; and when I say “middle” I mean middle!  We have come home from our first visit to Ukraine and are awaiting news about our second trip.  Although we have a tentative date of 9/22 to return to Ukraine, we really have no idea when we will be returning.  (God really blessed us with a great round trip itinerary from Ukraine to SA and SA to Ukraine that will only cost a little over $100 to have the dates changed!) 

God really laughed when I played the “adoption card” as an excuse to not join the Bible study.  He, and not so subtly I must add, told me that He has things to tell me about our family through the study over Jonah.  This goes without saying, but I could not say “no” to God since He is the one that has so perfectly built David’s and my family.  From the moment He gave us Copeland through an adoption that only He could have orchestrated, we knew that He desired us to grow our family and our ministry/service to Him through adoption.  Three years ago, he added “Down syndrome” to the word adoption as He brought our precious Silas to us.  Then, last November He added the words “Orphan” to adoption and Down syndrome.  By mid-December, He added an “s” to the word orphan.  So, it was abundantly clear that our obedience to Him must include service/outreach concerning DOWN SYNDROME, ORPHANS, and ADOPTION.  Our ministry will not stop once we bring Teague, Maclayne, and Trenton home. 

God made that abundantly clear to David and me as we have continued to pray about the special needs ministry we want to start that will reach out to individuals with DS, their families, and their church families through the love of Christ.  We desire to minister to both the churched and un-churched.  The un-churched, of course, will be taught of the love of Jesus Christ and the necessity of having a personal relationship with Him and a support system that will grow them in Christ.  The churched will be ministered to in a variety of ways.  It could be through education, respite care, specific resources, inclusion in differing church classes/activities, training of church workers who will be involved with special needs members and their families, etc.

So, as you can see, God has A LOT in store for David and me.  It became abundantly clear to me that He has chosen this Bible study over Jonah as another way to speak to me.  How did this great realization finally hit me over the head?  Let me count the ways:  1.  I called the church yesterday a few minutes before 5 pm to “sign up” in hopes that it would either be too late to sign up or the church office would have already closed.  2.  I would need childcare during the Bible study times and it would be too late to reserve a spot for Silas.  3.  I would miss SO MUCH of the study while David and I were back in Ukraine.  4.  For once in my life, I could not think of any back-up excuses and justifications as to why I couldn’t join the study!   

Needless to say, the church office was not closed, there was still room in the class, Silas was added to the childcare list, I will be able to access the Bible study online while we are in Ukraine, and God FREEZED my brain for 24 hours so I could not possibly come up with any excuses/justifications!

So, Jonah and learning to navigate a life interrupted here I come!  You know, I have always enjoyed fishing and David grew up deep sea fishing, so maybe I’ll be able to pass on a few nuggets to him while I’m in the belly of the whale with Jonah!       

On another note, there is no news out of Ukraine as of today.  There are a few documents that are being completed in order for us to have a court date.  As soon as we get the court date, I will definitely post it on here.  We are praying that it will be VERY SOON because it was really hard having to leave our babies in Ukraine and return to the States empty handed.  We are trusting in God’s timing and praying, praying, praying…