Then there was Russia!

In Februray 2002, we went to a domestic adoption information meeting at Bethany Christian Services in Lancaster, PA. We heard a whole lot of information, left the meeting excited and prayed for peace as we pursued a domestic adoption. March went by then April then May and then along came Mother's Day. After 4 years of trying to conceive on our own with no success of a baby to hold, I cried to Steve (yet again) and together we prayed and laid our burden to be parents in His hands and did our best to leave it there. The rest of the month, we continued to pray about a domestic adoption but also looked at international adoption websites.

Our dear friends Matt and Dawn Lambert had just brought their two adorable children home from Bulgaria and had been talking so highly of All God's Children International (AGCI) which is the agency that they used. We looked at their website and felt led to take the next step. On June 6, 2002, I called AGCI and asked them to send us an informational packet. We got it 2 days later via FedEx. We met at Antonio's for a slice of pizza and to look everything over. We studied all of the different countries that AGCI worked with. For China both parents had to be over the age of 30. Uh... no luck there. I was only 24 and Steve was 26. Next... Guatemla.. didn't meet criteria for that country either. Romania... closed. Etc., etc.... Then there was Russia! We looked down their qualifications and check! We were golden! The only negative with Russia was that we wouldn't get a referral for 12 - 18 months after submitting our dossier packet (which typically took 4 - 6 months) and then we would have to make two trips there. The first trip is to declare that we do want to adopt a certain child and possibly change their name. The second trip (anywhere from 4 - 8 weeks later) would be for our court hearing and to legally become the parent of that child and then bring him/her home. We prayed about adopting from Russia for really long time (about a whole week) and have never felt more certain that God wanted us to go through AGCI to bring our child home from Russia. We sent in our first check and registration info to AGCI. Tah Dah!!!!!! A few days later, we got a huge packet of paperwork which when completed would compile our dossier pack. I started working on it right away.

I was in all my glory! It might take most people 4 to 6 months to complete all of this crap (uh, I mean paperwork) but I was well on my way of filling forms out, signing here and initialing there. Along came July and I had submitted almost all of the forms, gotten them apostilled at the state capital building and then made copies of copies of copies of copies. The only thing we had left to do was our home study which usually took 2 - 3 months to complete.

Then came August and we had our first meeting scheduled to start our home study. But on August 6, 2002 (just 2 months after calling AGCI for the first time), our lives changed forever.