Stories About Adoption - Page 2

 

As summer set in at over 100 degrees in Texas one day, I brought our mail in and noticed that OM had sent the OM Ships' brochure which comes out four times a year. Usually I glance over the whole brochure before I read it. This time something caught my eye and hit me really hard. Within the brochure they had an article about the orphan ministry that one of the OM Ships had taken part in. I didn't know that they (OM) were involved in orphan ministry. They (the orphans) were all dressed up in brand new overall and baseball caps which had been donated to the orphanage.

 They were beautiful children! Who were these children I thought? Were they adoptable? I asked my husband if I could email the OM Ships' office in Germany and find out about these children. I emailed them the next day and got a reply very quickly, that I needed to get in touch with a man who had been one of the Ships for ten years and had worked with the orphan ministry. I called and emailed him to get in touch with him as soon as possible.

His answer was that the children on the brochure were not adoptable because of the sensitive situation in that country, but if we were interested, we could adopt from Ukraine. Well, I knew that we could adopt from Ukraine, but we never had a connection or "direction" from the Lord to go there. I told my husband about the brochure and asked what he thought.

We decided to tell our daughter about the brochure and see what her reaction would be, in regard to adopting an older child instead of a baby. God had prepared her heart. She was excited about adopting an older sibling (not older than her), so she would have someone to "play" with and that could talk to her.

She had watched other friends of ours' adopt babies and noticed that they were going to have to wait a few years before they could really "play together". "Yes I would really like an older girl instead of a baby sister to play with," was her final answer.

We never got a "match" with the agency that we had signed up with in Dallas and God "nudged us" further to pursue an adoption in Ukraine.

After finishing numerous items of paperwork, getting fingerprinted (twice) and having a social worker come and visit us, we were ready to go. It was not an easy process by any means. I just remember always asking people on the phone if they could somehow "move" our envelope along so that it would not sit in a pile and go unnoticed for weeks or months!

One woman that I spoke with said that it would be no problem to do that. She went on to say that it was a good thing that I spoke up, because they received over 150 envelopes a day (with official letters in them). Unless I had said something, it would definitely have gone unnoticed for a long time! We had a six month deadline to meet.

Otherwise our paperwork would expire and we would have to start all over again with the "paperwork" process.

Before leaving for Ukraine, we got an email from our translator/facilitator in Kiev, saying that a colleague's family had cancelled their appointment with the Adoption Center in Kiev and he asked if we would like to come in their place? We were so excited and even though we would only have one week to pack, it was not even a question for us.

Our answer was yes! We decided to wait a few days for their response and confirmation to come before we would buy our tickets to fly. They finally answered us, saying that the family who were originally invited had changed their minds again and were going to come after all. Our hearts were broken.

We continued to wait for our invitation from the Adoption Center in Kiev. It finally came in our mail. In between the "wait," the United States invaded Iraq. Would that affect us in going?

Someone asked me if we were still going to go even though we were in the middle of a war? I thought and prayed about it all and decided that unless they closed the DFW airport in Texas, there was nothing that was going to stop us from going. All three of us boarded the plane to fly to Kiev.

(Continue to Chapter 4)

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