Getting Nowhere Fast!

Wow! Where has the time gone? It's seems like just last week when we became excited about our Immigration Documents being processed! That was six months ago! Oh well, time flies when your busy and that we've been! It's been awhile since we last updated and a lot has happened. So, we'll start with the most recent and go backwards.

December 10-We received an email from our agency that we sent her the wrong notarized document. I couldn't believe it! The one final piece of paper the completes our dossier and we send her the wrong one! She claims that this won't effect how soon it gets turned into the Polish authorities so we hope that's the truth. Otherwise, here is another hold up that is taking up our precious time! Just in case, we mailed the right one TODAY! We'll let you know when our documents are in Poland! Hopefully it will be soon!

(Melanie Writes)

November 28-This was the day of our combined Thanksgiving Service at our church. We were blessed by a very surprising, yet generous outpouring of love from our congregation. This particular morning I was singing on the praise team and James was sitting in the balcony. The Pastor had just said a prayer and I was getting ready to sing a solo, when the pastor called us both to the front. Surprised we came as directed. Our Pastor then started to explain to the congregation what we were doing and how much it cost. He also added what great parents we would be and how we were following the Lords Will. He then asked for donations! By the time he was done and we sat back down I was in tears and still had to sing! Thankfully, I was able to sing with a whole new spirit. The song was entitled "He's Been Faithful!" Fitting, don't you think! We later found out that the congregation donated almost $1000. Now that's what I call "the Body of Christ" at work! (We're still working on our thank yous!)

November 20-This Thursday night we had the opportunity to attend a special dinner hosted by our social worker through Lutheran Social Services. (Melanie's parents came too!) Everyone there had either adopted, was in the process, or was considering it (as my dad puts it "an adoption support group" of sorts). We met many great couples and kids! It was a great experience and we had a lot of fun! James even won a prize! While there we also met a great couple who live just outside of Galesburg named Scott and Jena Cramer! They are adopting a little girl from Ethiopia and have an awesome adoption story! I hope they don't mind, but I have added them to our list of blogs that we follow! I also found out that Jena used to teach kindergarten in the same school were I teach! What a small world! Here is a picture of the "adoption support group!" I had to scan it in so it's a little hard to see, but you'll get the idea!

The Perfect Song!

(Melanie Writes:)

I have been looking for the last two years to find this song! I heard it two years ago (December) on WCIC 100.5 fm and absolutely fell in love with it! Knowing for sure I'd hear it again, I didn't try to figure out who it was by. Then I realized that Christmas was over and I hadn't heard it again. Since then I've been trying to remember some of the words so that I could do a search for it. Finally a few weeks ago, I must have remembered just the right words because I found it! It is by a Christian band entitled Third Day and it is on their Christmas Offerings album. The song is entitled Merry Christmas. It puts into words how we feel especially during the Christmas season. If you have a moment to watch the video and listen to the song, I highly recommend it! Otherwise the lyrics are written out below. I also have this song on our Playlist on the bottom left of this web page. Enjoy!



There's a little girl trembling on a cold December morn
Crying for momma's arms
At an orphanage just outside a little China town
There the forgotten are
But half a world away I hang the stockings by the fire
And dream about the day when I can finally call you mine

It's Christmas time again but you're not home
Your family is here and yet you're somewhere else alone
And so tonight I pray that God will come and hold you in his arms
And tell you from my heart I wish you Merry Christmas

As I hang the tinsel on the tree and watch the twinkling lights
I'm warmed by the fire's glow
Outside the children tumble in a wonderland of white, Make angels in the snow
But half a world away you try your best to fight the tears
And hope that heaven's angels come to carry you here

It's Christmas time again but you're not home
Your family is here and yet you're somewhere else alone
And so tonight I pray that God will come and hold you in his arms
And tell you from my heart I wish you Merry Christmas

Christmas is a time to celebrate the holy child
And we celebrate his perfect gift of love
He came to earth to give his life And prepare a place for us
So we could have a home with him above

It's Christmas time again and now you're home
Your family is here so you will never be alone
So tonight before you go to sleep, I'll hold you in my arms
And I'll tell you from my heart, and I'll you from my heartI wish you Merry Christmas

Mailed Off!

Melanie Writes:

We are officially done with the "Paper Chase" portion of the adoption! Wow! Looking back I never thought it would've taken us this long! But it has and the real "wait time" is about to start. We mailed our dossier this morning to our agency and sometime this week they will check over it and send it off to Poland. We will let you know when it gets there because you'll probably hear us cheer from all over Galesburg! Once it arrives in Poland, it will take them a few weeks to translate then we will send in a "translation fee" and the wait to be matched officially begins.

Thus far our wait time ranges anywhere from 4-12 months, with much uncertainty attached. I plan to talk with Lina (our agencies founder, also our coordinator) this week to see if she has any idea how long this will take. Following along with others who are adopting from Poland (and our agency) they are on their 10 month. It is a bit hard for me to swallow, but I know it is "all in God's timing!" Being a teacher it would be ideal if we could travel in spring and then I would have the whole summer to be with our children. I suppose I'll just have to wait and find out!

Also, I want to thank everyone who has committed to praying for us and our children. We believe in the power of prayer and can already see them working. Please continue to remember us. Another huge THANK YOU to those of you who have been able to support us financially. We have raised enough to not only pay the dossier fee of $5,500 but also to pay most of the $1000 translation fee! I can't even begin to tell you what a blessing this has been! God bless you and to let you know a very special thank you will be in the mail very soon!


On another note, the last step of the paper gathering was to add photos of us and our house. Below are some of my favorite poses that our good friend Melissa Willis took for us. She is starting her own photography business and if your looking for someone good, she's the one! (That is if you live near Galesburg, IL!) (business card below)













O.K. I know, enough pictures of us, but James says I have to include one of him with our dog Maui. (since I put one of Maui and I on last time) So here's Maui and James! (Sorry, she's not cooperating, but that's fairly normal! Hehe!)

Yeah! Praise God!

Sorry it has taken us so long to update! Time has just been flying and we haven't found time to do much of anything, but keep busy!

Praise God! Thanks to friends and family we have raised enough money to turn our dossier in! With the $2,500 matching grant we received from Lifesong we raised a total of $5,895! Our dossier fee is $5,600 + $1,000 translation fee. We are so excited that through you, God has provided almost all of the dossier fees! We are confident that if God has brought us this far he will be faithful to the end!

We have had several friends ask us if they can still donate. Yes! Our account is open for as long as we like.

Tomorrow is another big day for us! We are driving to Springfield, IL to get the rest of our documents Apostilled. Hopefully we can turn our documents in before the end of the month! "Hold on little Kochersperger's! Mommy and Daddy are coming to get you!"

One reason for our hectic life is due to putting up a new privacy fence. Trying to get this down before the ground freezes is proving to be difficult! Here is a picture of James and friend (Chris) hard at work drilling holes.

Chris' wife Melissa (a good friend of Melanie's) also took a picture of Melanie and the family dog Maui! (Maui is slightly spoiled! She just got done playing frisbee and is a little out of breath!)

How To Thank You?!

Once again God has overwhelmed us with such love and support from our friends and family! We do not have words that will express just how deeply blessed and thankful we are to know you and have you in our lives. Thank you for your kind words, prayer and support! We are praying that God will richly bless you for the kindness you have shown us!


If you have questions regarding the support letter, please read the previous post. If you still have questions, please feel free to contact us. We're more than willing to clear up any confusion.


Melanie Writes:
As promised, here is a picture of my precious students. They are a handful and exceptionally chatty, but I won't complain. They're very bright and I am excited about what we will get to do this year!

MRS. K'S ANGELS!

Questions?

Well, we have finally sent out some support letters and it looks like several of you have some questions. Please understand that this is perfectly fine with us and we invite you to ask as many questions as you want! To begin with, here are a few pieces of information that may help with your understanding of our fundraiser and adoption process.

• -Our adoption agency is Saint Mary International not Lifesong for Orphans. Lifesong for Orphans is strictly a non-profit organization, started by Christians, to help support adopting families in financial need. We had to apply to Lifesong and were thankfully accepted to receive help.
• -Our adoption agency and Lifesong for orphans are both non-profit 501c organizations and have both been cleared by the IRS. We have checked them out thoroughly and know without a fraction of a doubt that we are not being scammed. We invite you to check out their websites listed on the sidebar of this site.
• -Lifesong for Orphans has set up an account for us, so we are able to keep track of what is going on.
• -Please send your donation to Lifesong for Orphans. The matching grant will only be matched if they receive your donation.
• -Yes! All the money donated will be applied to our adoption expenses.
• -Questions? Please call us or e-mail us!

Thank you to all of you who are willing to help us out with your prayers and/or financially. We know how confusing this all sounds, but please trust us when we say that this is where God wants us to be. We have complete faith that God will take care of us. And from what we hear, He is using his gracious and tender hearted followers to help take care of us too!

Also, while reading my Adoptive Families magazine, I found some neat adoption "lingo" that I thought some of you might be interested in.

• -"Birthparent" or "biological parent" rather than "real parent"
• -"Parent" rather than "adoptive parent"
• -"International or Intercountry adoption" rather than "foreign adoption"
• -"Make an adoption plan" rather than "give up a child" or "put up for adoption"
• -"Was adopted" rather than "is adopted"

Back To School!

Melanie Writes:

Wow! I can't believe it's that time of the year again! Summers go by way to fast! Here I am sitting here updating our blog when I should be getting ready for my class tomorrow. I had an opportunity to meet my students on Friday and I'm really looking forward to this year! I have a lot of nice families and the children seem sweet and energetic! After I take a class picture I'll post it so you can all see!

On the adoption front, we still are working on getting everything apostilled. We have just sent in James' birth certificates to California to get them official at $20 a document. I'm so thankful we live in Illinois! It's only $2 here! Thank Goodness! The rest of our documents are all Illinois issued. We plan to apostille the rest in September and will hopefully be able to turn in our dossier in October!

OUR FUNDRAISER!
The Lord is good! After receiving our matching grant from Lifesong For Orphans we are a little more at ease. We know things will come together, but sometimes it's just hard to trust without anything tangible to hold onto. We have currently finished up our support letter and hope to have those mailed out sometime this week with the help from my precious and hard working mother! Thanks Mom! Deciding who to send the letters to is becoming another hard thing to do. We don't want anyone to feel left out if they didn't receive one and we don't want anyone to think that we're being pushy if they did receive one and feel that they shouldn't have. Does this make sense? Any ideas for us? I suppose that if you don't receive one and want one, please let us know and we'll gladly send one to you and if you receive one and don't want it then just toss it. (No hard feelings here!) I hope this reasoning works!

Thanks again and God's Blessings to all of you! We Love You!
(O.K. now I suppose I better get to work for tomorrow!)

Answered Prayer!

Well, things can certainly go faster now if we want them to. For the first time since we've started, the "ball is in our court." We are working on getting all our official documents more official (otherwise known as apostilled). Then we will be able to turn in our papers (or dossier) into Poland. This next step is a big milestone in the adoption process, but also a very costly one. God has promised to take care of us if we followed his calling to adopt and he is certainly starting to come through! Praise God! Just last week we received a phone call from Lifesong for Orphans telling us that they had accepted and approved our application for a matching grant! We were awarded a $2500 matching grant! We are hoping this is just the beginning of many miracles yet to come. Thank you for your prayers and support! Now that school is starting up again, our time is becoming very thin and we still have so much left to do! Please pray for patience and faith. Through family, friends, and Lifesong for Orphans, God has done so much already and we can only be thankful!

It Finally Came!

Hallelujah! We can't believe it! Just last Thursday (right before we left for Louisville) a surprise showed up in our mailbox! We received the APPROVAL LETTER for our orphan petition! This is the document from the Chicago Immigration Office that we thought we wouldn't get for at least 4 more months. It's the oddest thing because their website still says they're processing orphan petitions from November 24 (ours was March). It literally showed up out of the blue! This was the piece of our dossier that we had to have before we sent it into Poland. (Dossier-papers that tell Poland all about us and our intentions to adopt children from their country.)

So what does this all mean for us? It means that whenever we're ready, we can send everything into Poland so that we can be matched with our child(ren)! We still have a few things left to do however. We thought we had 4 months to go so we weren't in a big hurry with anything. We have all the documents we need, but now they all have to be made official by sending them into the state to be apostilled. We're not sure how long this will take but are fairly confident that it won't be more than a few weeks.

We are hoping to have our dossier turned into Poland by late September or early October. Once that is turned in, we could wait anywhere from 4 months to 12 months to be matched with our child(ren). Because we are not being "to picky" about the ages or sex of our child(ren), we're expecting it to go much faster than 12 months. We're hoping to travel in early spring of 09, but we'll just have to wait and see!

Thanks again for all your love, prayers, and friendship! We would be lost without you! God's Blessings!

Still Waiting!

Hello Everyone!

First off, we are setting a search party out for "Polishmom." She left us such a sweet comment, but we have no way of contacting her! Polishmom, if you're out there, we would love to get in contact with you! We have lots of questions! Please e-mail Melanie at mkochersperger@galesburg205.org.

On another note, we just have to say that this summer is going by fast. But nonetheless, we are having a lot of fun! We are really working on fixing up our house (painting, new landscaping, etc.) because we know once our children arrive, we'll have a lot less time. Things are going relatively smoothly, but there is still so much more to do before school start up again! God has also blessed us with some great friends. New friends and old friends alike have been making our wait so much easier! Praise God for friends!

Not much new news on the adoption front, we are still waiting on Chicago Immigration Services and currently it looks like they're about 4 months behind. We are taking advantage of this time and are currently working on turning in some grant applications. The money is perhaps the scariest part of this entire adoption process. However, it wouldn't be called having "faith" if God didn't give us a reason to use it! We have also been working on our dossier for Poland. It is coming together well and should be ready to go once we get approval from CIS!

Once again, thank you for all your support, friendships and prayers! We love you!

Some Progress!

We never realized how hard this would be to keep updated! It's hard to do when not a lot changes. We do have some progress however! Just a few days ago I checked the USCIS website to see how they were progressing on our Orphan Petition. Good News! They are now processing applications from Nov. 25. Ours is a March processing date, so they are finally getting closer. Hopefully they can keep up this momentum so that we can get our dossier turned in this fall.

During the wait we're trying to keep up the excitement, so Melanie is reading none stop. We just received a devotional from Shoahannah's Hope and are really enjoying it! There is an article in it from some parents who adopted overseas and they wrote a neat little phrase.
"You're not waiting on man, you're waiting on God!" It helps put things in prospective!

Also, we found another couple adopting from Poland! Like our friends the Baxter's , this couple is getting close to the end as well! We feel so blessed to have found them! It has been neat sharing experiences. To check out Jeff's and Debbie's blog click on the link!

www.adoptingfrompoland.blogspot.com

Thank you again for your love and support! We appreciate you! God's Blessings!

Kicking It Up A Notch!

It seems we've been stagnant for so long and although not much has changed, we are getting started on some entirely new paper work! We have begun to search and apply for many different grants and feel confident that God will lead us to the right ones. One we are especially excited about is a fundraiser of sorts. This one will match the amount that we raise from our church family, family and friends. We're in the very beginning process, so were not sure of all the specifics, but please stay tuned.

We are still waiting on CIS (Immigration Services) and we fear that this is going to be a longer wait than the actual "child referral" process. This document normally takes 2-3 months to process and ours has already taken 2 months and may have another 7 to go. The Chicago Immigration office is so far behind and unfortunately they're not gaining very fast. Please pray that they catch-up at a faster rate than what they are going and/or that we remain patient and calm during this second (but not last) hold-up.

In the mean time, we are rejoicing with our friends Dave and Teresa Baxter! They have experienced quite an adoption journey through Vietnam and are about to be blessed with a referral. Check out their blog as they get ready for the last step of their journey.
Their Blog:
www.threebax.blogspot.com

Once again, thanks for your encouragement and support!

God Bless!

Finally Updating!

Sorry everyone! I confess I haven't done a good job keeping this blog updated. We've been very busy especially with the end of the school year approaching. We promise we'll do better. There really isn't much to add and that's what makes it so hard. However, I have done some reading and have found some good bits of information that I will share with you after this brief update.

We are currently still waiting on our Orphan Petition from the Immigration Office in Chicago. They are currently running about 4 months behind, but could jump up a few months at any time. Until we recieve this document, we are pretty much on hold. Once this document is returned we can move forward and send all of our papers to Poland. In the mean time, we are getting our finances in order and are applying for some grants and financial aid now that our home study is completed.

Applying for grants is a lot more difficult than we thought it would be. The forms are so comprehensive and they all want some type of testimonial or biography and require just enough "different" information that we really can't use the same one. However, we won't complain because these grants are the reason we felt we could take this big step called "adoption." Please continue to pray for us in the areas of faith, trust, and finances. There have been many moments when we have questioned ourselves wondering if we made the right choice. But we know that this is what God wants us to do and are trying to remember everyday to let it go and let God!

In the mean time, we've been reading the devotional book called "Couples Who Long For Children" by Ginger Garrett. One particular entry gave us a new out look on adoption. It said

"God has the right to give us children through any number of ways, and all are equally His and equally gifts from Him. We do not 'own' a child because he or she developed in our womb. Each child is a gift from God."

Thank you again for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. It means so much!

Home Study Complete!

We can finally say that our "Paper Chase" phase of the this process is almost over! Our home study is almost finished! We are waiting for our completed documents! This means that we can finally start applying for some grants and really get this process going. Our next step is to await the return of our Citizen Immigration document. The propsed time for this is approximately 5 months. Once we receive this back, we can turn in our dossier to Poland. Then we begin our "official" wait time for a child. Thank you again to all of you who have been so positive and who are praying for us! We appreciate it and love you all! We will do better in keeping this updated! It's been a very busy month!

Our New Look!

We hope you like our new design! We saw it on "Final Sense" and fell in love with it! How precious is this beautiful child?! We are still trying to make all our fun little elements fit onto this new template.

On the other hand, I want to bring you up to date on our new "developments!" We are still plugging away on paper work and other specifics. However, we did receive our notices in the mail last week to go for our fingerprinting in Naperville (@ the Immigration Office) this week! So we're making a nice little trip out of it and will spend the night with my brother and sister-n-law in Bourbonnais! We're excited about seeing our 4 year old niece (Kalyne) and 4 month old nephew (Caleb) again!

As we mentioned before, Immigration Services are behind by 7 months, but we did get our request for fingerprints rather quickly! Wouldn't it be nice if their moving a little quicker?!

A positive twist is that we are feeling pretty good about everything despite the long time frame. We had such a great morning at church with our church family asking us how things are going and giving us a plethora of encouragement! Thank you so much! You can't imagine how your comments make such a difference in our attitudes towards the situation. Thank you also for all your prayers. They are making a difference!

God Bless!

Latest Update!

Since our last update, we have had several more developments in our "adoption saga." To begin with, we want to thank all of our friends and family who are supporting and encouraging us. We feel so blessed! God has also provided us with new friends, whom we've had the privilege of getting to together with, who are traveling down a journey similar to our own! We have also had contact with other couples adopting internationally, which has also been extremely helpful! God is good!

As far as our updates go, we are still very pleased with our social worker and adoption agency. Our home study meetings are continuing and will probably be completed sometime in April. We are thankful for our home study agency Lutheran Social Services in that they are providing us with a very thorough training/counseling/supportive experience.

Our agency has moved us along the process as fast as possible, but I do feel we have hit a wall. We have turned our CIS document (Orphan Petition) into Immigration Services, which is great! Usually this document takes about 3-4 months to process. However, Immigration Services is behind by 7 months and unless they speed up, we won't be able turn our dossier into Poland until September. This part isn't so great. We were hoping to have our dossier in by June so as you can tell, this is much later then we were originally expecting. Our dossier needs to be turned into the country before our wait time begins for a child referral. Our referral time can take anywhere from 4-12 months.

If it really does take Immigration 7 months, then our time frame now (best scenario) is as follows:
March (08)-Turn in CIS document
September (08)-Receive CIS approval and turn in dossier
January (09)-Receive child referral
February (09)-Travel to Poland

It will undoubtedly go faster if our document is processed faster!

Please continue to keep us in your prayers and thank you for your continued support! We love you all!

The First Waiting Game

Not much has happened in the past several weeks, but we did send in our 38 page agreement a week ago. We are waiting to here back from agency about what our next step will be. I'm hoping it will be to send in our CIS document (Citizens Immigration Services) and begin work on our Dossier (our papers that will go over to Poland). We are itching to get the CIS turned in because it can take 3 months or more to process. In other words our adoption is pretty much on hold until that document gets returned to us!

We have started our home study and are excited that we are at least doing something substantial as far as getting this adoption underway. We really like our social worker and are currently working on some more adoption training which we find to be very beneficial.

We cherish each one of your prayers and praise God everyday for his never ending love and support. God's Blessings!

Could this be our future child?!

Isn't he adorable? James found this on "YouTube." This is a video of a 4 year old polish boy playing the drums and he's good! His name is Igor Falecki. When the clip is over, you can choose from 15 other clips of him playing the drums. Unbelievable! You'll need to pause the music at the bottom of this page in order to hear it.

The Process Has Begun!

The process has finally begun! We received our acceptance letter in the mail today along with a 38 page agreement (Yikes!) from our new adoption agency! We are really excited about how fast things are finally going. It took our last adoption agency 1 month to process our application and get everything sent out to us. It took this agency a week! We are pleased with the personal service SMIA (Saint Mary's International Adoptions) has given us and are really looking forward to working with them. They have such a good relationship with Poland and we are looking forward to watching this process unfold.

We have also had our first home study done and are expecting another visit soon. We really like our social worker and feel she is a God send. She is truly wanting to help us and our adoptive child (ren) get ready for this gigantic leap of faith. We really appreciate that about her. Our fears have subsided some and we hope to have the home study completed in a few weeks!

Thanks again for your continued prayers, encouragement, and support. We feel blessed to have family and friends as dedicated as you!

God's Blessings to you all and we will keep you updated as things move along!

New Agency

It is official! We have a new agency and a new country! I have to say however, this was a very hard decision to make. How does one even go about trying to decide where their child is located? It's such a monumental decision! We came to this decision through lots and lots of prayer/communication with God and secondly through lots and lots of research. Here are some reasons why we changed and why we chose the country and agency we did.

-Our previous agency called us and said that they highly recommend us changing from Kazakhstan to Russia. Kazakhstan they said was giving out blind referrals and they said they had trouble with perspective parents arriving in Kazakhstan to find their child to have some severe medical problems. Enough so that the parent has to turn down the child :( This doesn't happen everytime, but was something we would have to think about.

-Why not Russia? Our agency said that Russia was going through some changes, thus causing the waiting/referral time to go up to 2 years. They are right, Russia is going through quite a bit of changes and have closed the doors on many agencies around the country. However, the other agencies we researched showed the referral time was under a year.

-Why did we change agencies? Well, through all our research, we found that CHI's (our previous agency) waiting times were much longer then other programs. We believe they are a very good agency and we wish we could've stayed with them. But I'm not sure we could wait 2 years if we knew that there were other agencies who could move the process along faster! I'm not sure why CHI seems to be moving slower. Possibly due to an influx in applicants maybe. They are a very good a reputable agency.

-Why did we change countries to Poland? Well, hearing the information about Kazakhstan scared us and Russia seems to be really unstable, so through our research we found the Poland program! After reviewing all the information we could get on it, we decided that Poland was a good match! The country is more stable than the others (hopefully it stays that way), when you get your referrals they are filled with a lot of information on your child, the orphanages are well cared for and maintained, and we could possibly get a child under a year!

Our new agency will be called Saint Mary International Adoptions. They specialize in adoptions in Ukraine, Poland, and Bulgeria. The owner and founder of the agency is actually from Bulgeria and is said to have a good relationship with these countries. We have just sent in our application, so hopefully everything will workout. We had to reschedule our Home Study because our new agency needed contact with them before we began. However, our new agency (whom I've had contact with now for about 3 weeks) is smaller and more personable. I know we won't be lost in the shuffle. We are very confident with them and with Poland.

We're trying to be patient! Keep praying for us! I know it's working! God's Blessings to you all! We'll keep you updated!

Did We Change Countries?

It may appear from our site that we have changed countries. Well, we think we might have! However it is not set in stone (James just wanted to know what the time and weather were like in Poland). We are still comparing programs and agencies, but are seriously considering Poland. We are still in prayer about this decision and will keep you updated about what we decide!

Thank you to all of you who have given us feed back. We really appreciate it and have checked out all the agencies.

Making Decisions

Of course things can't go smoothly, that would be to simple! God is definitely trying to teach us patience and how to put all our trust in Him! We are facing a big decision which has really been stressing us out. We found out a week ago that Kazakhstan gives only blind referrals, which means you don't know anything about your child until you get there and meet them. Our organization said that many people have traveled there and have found their child to have some severe medical problems. Therefore, the couple has to get matched with another available child while their there, or they go home without a referral. This usually means that they wait some more and the waiting time is already up to 12-15 months. Frustrated we asked what they (CHI) recommended, they said we should switch to Russia. However, that is a 2 plus year wait and we should put that we will accept a 24 month old. We of course were hoping for a child under 18 months (or infant). Needless to say, we were very upset. We couldn't imagine waiting another 2 years! So, we decided to look around at other organizations to compare programs and wait times. What we found is that many programs are moving much faster (as per web site). I plan to make some calls on Monday to talk to these other organizations. If times are shorter, we may end up switching agencies and possibly countries too. I am disappointed however, because I really like CHI. I feel that they do an excellent job and I believe that is why their wait times are so long. Their are a lot of families adopting through them!

So next time you read this, hopefully we'll have our minds made up about where were adopting from and who our agency will be. Any ideas or advice for us, please let us know! Pray that God will give us insight, patience and trust! God Bless you all!

Home Study Update 2

Good News! Thanks to an angel named Susan at Lutheran Social Services, we already have a home study scheduled! And it's in two weeks! Thank goodness! How we found her is a long story, but she is out of Moline, IL. I told her our dilemma and she said that all I have to do is get all our things together (CHI is sending us back all our papers) and she will accept them as they are! We only have to fill out a registration form for Lutheran Social Services and were set. As long as everything is in (fingerprints, DCFS documents, etc.), it shouldn't take long to complete our home study! I'm so relieved. Thanks for all your prayers and support! It looks like things will finally get under way!

I also want to thank everyone who has left us such kind and thoughtful messages! I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to visit your sites, but I plan to soon! It's nice to know we're not alone in this "very long" journey! God Bless!

Home Study Update

Well, we finally have some news to share with you. Unfortunately, it isn't that great, but at least it's news. I was beginning to think we were going to be stuck in the same spot forever. As some of you know, our agency (CHI) had some problems with some of their employees this past summer. The employees were doing some illegal things (don't know specifics) with home study paper work and pretty much got our agency in trouble with DCFS (yes, the employees were let go). Therefore, CHI has been under investigation the last 7 months. They were supposed to have been cleared by the new year, so that they could continue with the home studies! This is what we've been waiting for since October! However, if you know anything about DCFS, nothing ever goes fast. So, today I found out that CHI will not be able to do any home studies until after June 1. So now, we need to find a social worker here in town, or close, to give us our home study. This is a problem only because we had everything done for CHI. Which means, we might have to do several things over again. I'm not looking forward to that at all. However, CHI was very kind and are returning all our documents to us, including our money. So the only thing we really lost was precious time.

On a brighter note! Children's Hope International is still fine to do our adoption and I am still pleased with them. Also, we are remembering that everything is in the Lord's timing. And as James said, "Maybe the children we are meant to adopt, aren't ready to be adopted yet. And this time that we're waiting, is meant to match us with "our" children created just for us!" Thanks again for all your prayer and encouragement. God Bless!