How we got here, pt. 2

(The beautiful family we met while tracting. They all became members of the church. Giorgy, Lyuda, me and Gayana. August 1998. Voronezh, Russia)

Michael was not surprised by my impression, it was something I had brought up on occasion, but it certainly was something we needed to both be on the same page about. The coming weeks found us praying more seriously and attending the temple to confirm our plans. We had long been open to adoption and had considered other opportunities, but as we prayed about each one of those we were directed to not pursue them. This time things were different, we kept having the feeling to proceed and that the timing was now. I remember distinct moments of fear and worry, but immediately it would be followed by an overpowering impression that we were doing the right thing. Our kids were waiting for us. It always came out as kids and not kid & so when we were asked to state our preference it only felt natural to say we wanted two. And really, we're going through all this effort, why not bring two home at once? Especially when you know you'll be keeping siblings together?

We had three separate meetings with a social worker in our home (which started in December), we gathered birth and marriage certificates, employment verification, were checked to see if we showed up on any child abuse registries, friends wrote letters of recommendations, we were required to read a 300 pg. manual & complete 10+ hours of international adoption training, we were fingerprinted by the department of homeland security, and we waited for our approval from the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services). When this finally arrived in late April, we were ready to prepare our basic registration packet. This packet consisted of more than 3o documents that all had to be notarized and apostilled (Never heard of that before? It's basically a higher level notarization that allows a document to be recognized in foreign countries). The registration packet was sent off to our agency in early June. They would confirm that everything was in place and then send it to Russia to be translated and officially registered in a certain region. It could have been any of the 12 regions that our agency works in & we were anxious to find out where our children would come from.

Around the middle of August I emailed our coordinator Anna to find out the status of our paperwork. I wanted to know if she knew yet what region we were in. She replied to my email a few days later saying our paperwork had been registered in Moscow.

Moscow!? Really? The tears flowed down my face.

We'd be returning to my mission to add to our family.

(to be continued)