Thursday we were relieved to finish up the third and last of our home study interviews in Birmingham. After much soul-searching, questioning, gathering of documents, and an assortment of other gut-wrenching and time-consuming activities, we were finally done with our part of the big “step one” in adoption.
Our social worker has been very thorough, and we were impressed that she even began typing up the report before our last meeting. But when we discovered that the official copy couldn’t be finished before getting our background check back, we were a bit deflated. We had sent the background check in over a month ago, so why was it taking so long?
And then Friday, we checked online and the background check had come in! What timing! Just another reason to thank our God who continues to come through for us in incredible ways, over and over again!
Our next big hurdle is applying for the I-600A, which is the visa for the children, allowing them to come into the U.S. once adopted, as I understand it. (We can do this in about a week, after our home study has been written up and reviewed.) This could take weeks or months, and any time you are dealing with the federal government, it is usually not a quick process. As we wait for the I-600A, we will gather the rest of our documents for our dossier and begin sending them to Ukraine for translation, so that everything will be ready when we go to get our biometric fingerprints.
There are so many steps to a Ukrainian adoption (as with all adoptions), and each step involves multiple other steps, and it involves much hard work, and much waiting. We are learning patience (never fun!) and learning to wait on the Lord, because this is ultimately up to His timetable.
Would you pray for our I-600A to be processed quickly? And while we are waiting on that, we will continue to work as hard as we can to gather our documents, and learn to wait on the Lord. He loves Tanya and Viktor even more than we do, and He knows best!
Our social worker has been very thorough, and we were impressed that she even began typing up the report before our last meeting. But when we discovered that the official copy couldn’t be finished before getting our background check back, we were a bit deflated. We had sent the background check in over a month ago, so why was it taking so long?
And then Friday, we checked online and the background check had come in! What timing! Just another reason to thank our God who continues to come through for us in incredible ways, over and over again!
Our next big hurdle is applying for the I-600A, which is the visa for the children, allowing them to come into the U.S. once adopted, as I understand it. (We can do this in about a week, after our home study has been written up and reviewed.) This could take weeks or months, and any time you are dealing with the federal government, it is usually not a quick process. As we wait for the I-600A, we will gather the rest of our documents for our dossier and begin sending them to Ukraine for translation, so that everything will be ready when we go to get our biometric fingerprints.
There are so many steps to a Ukrainian adoption (as with all adoptions), and each step involves multiple other steps, and it involves much hard work, and much waiting. We are learning patience (never fun!) and learning to wait on the Lord, because this is ultimately up to His timetable.
Would you pray for our I-600A to be processed quickly? And while we are waiting on that, we will continue to work as hard as we can to gather our documents, and learn to wait on the Lord. He loves Tanya and Viktor even more than we do, and He knows best!