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Today Lindsey and I received exciting news from our case manager at CWA. We are now officially pre-registered to adopt our child in the Ukraine! We received confirmation today from Ukraine that our new registration date at the SDAPRC is September 16, 2010! At this time our dossier will be due in Ukraine. Once it is submitted, our travel date to Ukraine to meet our child should come as quick as 3-5 weeks thereafter, as we have been told. This means we will likely be traveling to Ukraine in October!

This is very exciting for two reasons. First, we finally have a definite date from Ukraine of when all of the paperwork is due; there is no more guessing. We will travel to Ukraine shortly after that. Second, it’s very likely we will be in Ukraine during our two year wedding anniversary! (October 18th) What a wonderful way to spend such an occasion! Looking back on this entire experience we really were hoping that we would travel in the summer, but we will just have to be a bit more patient. Given that we officially started this process last August, we’re a bit over the year timeline, but God has a child picked out for us this Fall and the countdown can begin!

Even though our date falls in September, our dossier is actually due at our agency two months prior on July 16th, 2010 – My 27th birthday! This gives CWA 60 days to translate and prep all of our documents before sending them over to the Ukraine.

On a side note, a week or so ago I added to the side panel of this site, a link and instructions on how you can help us financially during this time. The good news is, we have a little more time to save than we anticipated, but we still have a long way to go. Our agency fees are paid, however we still have the large international fee to Ukraine which is approximately $14,000, a “relief donation” to Ukraine of $1,000, suggested $9,000 cash to have on hand for living expenses in Ukraine, and approximately $3,500 for travel expenses for our international flights. This is a lot of money, but we have full faith God will help us save every penny. To all of those who have already donated to this cause, we thank you!

If you feel led to be a part of our adoption financially, please click here.

Under Specify Donation, select General Fund: Adoption as the project type. Under Choose Person, select CWA Family and enter the following:

Scott and Lindsey Howell
2130 Water Crest Lane
Columbus, OH 43209

Your gift to us would be greatly appreciated! (and also tax-deductible through the link above). As a heads up, we are also planning on having a few fundraising events over the coarse of the spring and summer. Details on how you can help sponsor Lindsey during an upcoming half-marathon will be announced shortly.

If you can’t offer to help financially, please know there is also other ways you can be a part of this adoption! We consider this adoption a ministry, and we are always in desperate need of continued prayers that this journey continues as smoothly as it has.

It’s a month later and things have picked up quite a bit with our adoption process. Although, in the last month we did confuse some things that led us to believe we would have this process finalized in the late spring/early summer. I think the blame might have be on us for the misunderstanding. However, we’re happy to report we are still in a good spot and I’ll try to explain in this post what we believe is the correct time table to finalize our adoption.

First the good news – we have completed all of the Pre-Registration documents for the Ukraine’s State Department for Adoption and Protection of the Rights of Children (SDAPRC). This includes our home study report. Since my last update the report itself has been drafted, reviewed, revised and finalized by Adoption Circle. With much enthusiasm we are happy to announce we are officially done with that portion of the adoption. This document is what has been required along with several power of attorney forms, in order for us to successfully pre-register for the SDAPRC in Ukraine.

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For the first time today, I admit I finally had that feeling that wait a minute.. this adoption might actually happen. This is real, and not just some dream Lindsey and I have thought up. Since our last post on the adoption, we have received all of the required paperwork needed for our Home Study, completed the CPR classes, and passed (after failing once) the fire inspection.

With all of that done we were finally able to schedule our Home Study with Adoption Circle. This is the last step needed to complete our I-600A that we submitted to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services back in October. The Home Study is really in three parts. First being all of the paperwork and background checks we completed. Second being, today, when we visited this morning the offices of Adoption Circle for an interview with our social worker. During this time she got caught up on where we were in the process, and where we answered several misc. questions regarding why we were adopting, etc. It wasn’t a bad visit at all, and fairly laid back. For some reason I think we felt like we would be entering into some sort of interrogation, but it couldn’t have been further from it. If anyone reading is about to start a home study, whether for domestic or international adoption, take a breath. As long as you have all of your ducks in a row you’ll be fine.

Part three of the home study actually continues tomorrow. Our social worker will be making the trip out to our apartment for further individual interviews, as well as a safety audit. We’re a little nervous about this, but for the most part our house is still in pretty good order since our fire inspection. Really, I think the purpose of this visit if anything is to make sure we don’t live in a dysfunctional home with 100 cats or something. I’m sure we’ll be fine.

From these two visits today and tomorrow, the home study report will be written, checked over, sent over to our case worker at CWA, checked again, finalized, notarized, and apostilled. We weren’t sure how long it would take them to actually write the home study, but we were told today that it would take about two weeks. Honestly, it’s almost a surprise to us. If we have our home study copies ready by the end of this month we’ll be ready to finalize our U.S. paperwork and wait for approval from the USCIS. It could take up to three months from the time we send in our paperwork to get final approval from our government, but from the sound of it, we’re told we shouldn’t have to wait that long. (Knock on wood… we’re ready for delays if they come up).

Here’s another exciting bit we’ve learned. Obviously once we get U.S. approval we start working on our dossier paperwork for the Ukraine government. In the past we had learned that once we complete all of the dossier the next step would be to send it over to the Ukraine and wait about 2 to 3 months for Ukraine to approve us and send us a travel date. Well, now we have learned that Ukraine has just started a pre-registration process where first all we need to do is send a copy of our home study report and a Power of Attorney. After that is sent in, there has been reported cases that after just 10 days or so (not 2 to 3 months), Ukraine will give you a travel date with a month notice. With the pre-registration process in place they let you bring the remaining paperwork with you on your trip. This quite frankly is amazing. Now, I know God might put delays in our path regardless, but with this latest development of how fast things are moving we could be seeing this adoption being finalized a lot sooner than we had expected. For the longest time we had things planned out for June or July, but June might now be the very latest with April/May looking more like a reality.

We’re trying to not get too excited, because we know delays are inevitable in international adoption, but it’s exciting to hear how things are speeding up. It’s a little scary too though, as we have a lot we need to complete to get prepared to bring a child into this home, and we still have a lot of money we need to save. But whatever happens, I’m sure God will get us through it, even if we still end up making our trip in the middle of summer.

So things are shaping up well. It’s also exciting to hear on the news tonight how several orphans from Haiti were able to get their adoption expedited and are now with loving American families. I really am happy to see how international adoption is becoming a national subject.

To wrap up, please continue to keep us in your prayers as we still have several decisions to make while we get ready for this change in our lives. As well, for those who know them, keep the Yoder’s and the Goodman’s in your prayers as they get closer and closer to their respective adoptions.

Now, I better start helping the wife clean this place for tomorrow.

Hello, this is Lindsey!  Scott has been sluggish in updating his blog, so I thought that I would give a whirl at it.  I wanted to post an update about where we are at the process of bringing home our child, along with how God is working through the whole process.

We are currently going through the book Experiencing God during our Wednesday night Bible study.  This book keeps revealing to me day after day about how lost I really am.  I am so caught up in trying to make myself happy and content.  I am realizing that there are two ways to live your life: God-centered or me-centered.  Although I want to think of myself as this perfect Christian who has everything together and all the answers, I truly am not.  I continually struggle with making decisions that only have my best interests in mind.  I surrender some parts of my life to Christ, but I hold onto the majority of it.  I really enjoyed this quote from the study:

No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life that is wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him!

I often wonder why God called Scott and I to such a task as adoption.  I wonder how we actually heard His call amidst the mess that we (I) are.  I also wonder how many other calls that I have missed because I was too focused on myself and the plans that I was trying to make for myself.  I am overly thankful for God’s unconditional love and His grace that He would keep pursuing me after all the times that I have turned my back on Him.  As I walk forward each step of every day, I have to ask myself, who am I yielding my life to: God, or myself?  Who are you yielding your life to right now?  Are you missing out on something that God is calling you to do because you are afraid that obedience will cost too much? 

Scott and I are grateful for the people at NewLife who understood God’s focus on the orphans and who responded to what He was calling them to do.  Through their actions, God was able to work in Scott and I’s lives.  You never know what outcomes your actions are going to have, no matter how small they are.  By being obedient, you could be the stepping stone to other Christian’s obedience.  We are happy to announce that you will have the opportunity to be part of our story next Sunday, November 22nd.  NewLife Community Church Canal Winchester will be hosting a Concert for Adoption at 6:30.  During this concert you will enjoy a host of different musical talents and hear different couples from the church share how adoption has affected their lives and what you can do to help.

On our end of things, we are in the first part of our home study of preparing the paperwork.  We need to gather all of the information before we meet with the social worker.  We have sent in our requests for the child abuse registry reports, driving record histories, and medical statements.  This week we will work on scheduling a class to become CPR certified, scheduling an appointment for the fire marshal to do an inspection, passing out the reference letters for our friends to complete, and getting a letter from our employer regarding our current jobs.  We have an appointment tomorrow to get our fingerprints taken for the US government and we’ll get a second appointment for fingerprints for the home study.  After those things get completed, we’ll meet with the home study provider and go through an interview.  When the social worker has the required information, they will write their report.

I’ve also received some questions about the timeline.  As far as we know right now, we will likely travel to the Ukraine in July to bring home our child.  This could easily change, but it’s our best guess.  After the home study gets approved, the US government will have three months to approve our I-600A.  After the I-600A is approved, then we’ll start filling out our dossier paperwork.  It’s important not to start this paperwork until the I-600A is approved because the dossier paperwork expires in 6 months.  Once the dossier is done, we will send it to CWA and they will review it and have it translated.  The translated dossier will be sent to the Ukraine for the government’s approval.  In the past few months, they have been reviewing the paperwork and sending out a letter of invitation to travel to the prospective adoptive parents within 10 days of receiving the dossier!!  Wow, ten days!!  They will send us a letter with an appointment date usually 30 days out.  We’ll then have a month to schedule our travel and the transition of coming home as parents. 

Speaking of becoming parents, we are starting to make steps towards the change.  There were a couple of times  this past weekend when I’m sure that Scott’s heart skipped a beat.  The first was when we assembled the crib and put the mattress in it.  I’m sure he’s sad to see baby things taking over his computer/game room!  The other thing that jolted us into reality was installing the car seat in our car.  These are the main baby items that we have.  They are required for our home study so that the social worker can ensure how safe they are.  

So, that is where we are at.  Throughout this whole process, I’m just learning to trust God more and more and to lean on His strength and not my own plans.  It has been an enjoyable experience watching other people meet the needs that we have pop up.  We do not consider this adoption solely as a means to expand our family.  We feel like we are being obedient to God’s calling in rescuing a child from a life of loneliness and helplessness, since in reality, that is what Christ did when He died on the cross to save a mess like me and give me life more abundantly.

The first big fee is paid, and we are now a client of Christian World Adoption. The reality of what Lindsey and I are undertaking is starting to hit us, though I think it will take a bit longer for it to fully sink in. Shortly after we announced we were adopting we filled out the initial application, which followed by a bigger application, and we participated in an orientation webinar. However, now the real fun starts. Our contract with the agency has been filled out and we’ll be in touch with our Case Manager later this week. She will be our contact person throughout this entire process for this Ukraine adoption. In the mean time CWA has sent us about a dozen emails and a book called “Adoption Parenting” that we will start reading soon. (And yup, there’s a quiz at the end).

Tonight we started filling out some forms for the UCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services).  Even though we are not close to the actual dossier, as you can see below, we are definitely paper pregnant.

The biggest thing we need to focus on this week will be finding a Home Study provider. A home study is an interview process that takes about six months to complete with a social worker. We don’t have one yet, though I think we’re going to look into whoever Pastor Craig went with. Tonight we also tried to schedule out how we plan on completing all of the training that the agency requires.

That’s about it for now. We don’t have our foot completely in the water yet, but we’ll be diving in any moment now!