Jeff - US paperwork done - Bound for Kyiv!

The mound of paperwork is done and submitted. I must say – all those notarized, certified, apostilled documents (24 in all) looked really impressive! We packaged them all up and trusted them once again to FedEx. Then we watched the tracking system – Oakland, Arkansas (?), Paris…signed for in Kyiv! Sasha has the documents! During all of this, we’re thinking please don’t arrive after the day of the week that Sasha can take them in – that would add a week! But it all worked – Sasha received the entire dossier on a Monday.

OK, so if the process works as promised, it looks something like this:
• Week 1 – Home study submitted to SDA: here’s a real family ready to go
• Week 2 – present the entire dossier. SDA then has 20 days to provide a date
• Week 4 – (typical from other blogs I’ve read) SDA provides a date
• Week 7 – first appointment with SDA in Kyiv

When he confirmed that he had received the dossier, Sasha had David ask us if we could be ready to travel in two-three weeks. WHAT?!??! The original plan was about five weeks after he delivered them! Both Sue and I felt our pulse quicken. But heck yes – if we can go sooner to get our daughter, we’ll be there!

He delivered them on Wednesday and told us we would have a date by the following Friday. OK – slightly slower than 2-3 weeks, but we can use the time to prepare. Then the following Monday – we get the date! We have an appointment in Kyiv on October 19th!
• Oh, boy – we need flights.
• Do we have a plan for Connor? God bless my wife – and all the people she has coordinated with! I saw the calendar she printed out for the different families that will be hosting Connor while we’re overseas. I thought I was a pretty good manager – I can’t hold a candle to that schedule!
• What about “clean” money? I was amazed to learn that if you want new bills in San Jose, you can only get them for Chinese New Years. I love our multi-cultural neighborhood, but this did make me laugh. I can’t tell you how many different banks I’ve been to trying to take care of this piece of the puzzle.

So here we are: flights are booked, money is in hand, last packet of documents is basically prepped and ready to go, Connor’s calendar (color-coded for each family helping us and with phone numbers of everything from doctors to pet sitters) all ready to go. Now what?

If you haven’t figured this out yet, I tend to be just a bit flip. While joking with David about having paperwork withdrawals, my Brother reminded me to take a breather here; take time to wait upon the Lord. I could not have been Blessed any better than that reminder Blessed me. I am reminded to be grateful for all of the people helping us in this process, all of the people praying for our success and the future of our daughter, and just all the myriad of small Blessings that have been pored out on us during this process. I am in awe of what people have done to make sure that we succeed in this endeavor. The people who know of our journey have shared this message far and wide: I have heard from a prayer group in New Jersey! To think that there are warriors all over this planet that are praying for us is humbling. And I am reminded that I am being given an awesome responsibility to care for another child of God. Whenever I talk to someone about this process and they tell me what a great thing I’m doing, all I can respond is that it is truly a blessing on my family to do this.

With luck, we will arrive in Ukraine on 10/17. Our first SDA appointment is 10/19. BTW - this was week 6, not week 7! Our hope is to have the adoption complete by 10/30, though we may be a bit too optimistic. If we make that date, then we can have Nastiya back home before 11/15 - under a month from the first day of travel. This would mean that she would be back in our home less than four months after she went back to Ukraine.

So here we are on October 5th, with just 11 days before we head to Kyiv. I am going to take the advice of my Brother: I will wait upon the Lord. There will be scads of little details to take care of next week before we get on that plane: this is now my preparation time.