Whoop!!!

Okay that's for you Aggies out there :) But we are celebrating..

OUR 171H has arrived!!! We are APPROVED to adopt two children from the country of Ukraine!! Praise the Lord!!

I guess I have not been posting much on the paperwork process - it just seems soooo boring! Well, to fill you in - we sent our I600A application to USCIS in early February - maybe even January. It took quite awhile to get our fingerprint appointment - that was March 22nd.

Then we waited...

and waited...

and received in mid-May...

a document stating that our homestudy was missing some items - it was basically like wording was needing to be redone. So, we had our social worker revise the homestudy, add everything that could possibly be needed, had new background checks run (as required by this document), and overnighted it to San Antonio on May 19th. Not to get sidetracked, but does anyone know why USCIC wants these basic background checks run when they are running full-blown, fingerprinted FBI background checks?

Anyways, we had initially thought that we would be able to submit our paperwork in June. Now as I understand it, had that been the case, we would have missed out on submitting at the appropriate time due to missing the 171 and would have had to wait to get in line for 2009!!! But of course God's timing is always perfect and it turns out we will not be submitting until probably August - just the right amount of time to get everything remaining appostilled, translated, and mailed to Ukraine. We have truly seen God's hand in the timing of these events.

And one other thing - just so that I will not forget. We were with a different agency at the beginning - one that will remain unnamed but that we have left for what we believe were unscrupulous practices. We had sent them the initial payment in December when Nastya was here because we were told we had to get signed up in this 'line'. Well, it quickly seemed that this had been foolish and hasty to send this money to them - which we will probably never be refunded - with the concerns we already had. We were kicking ourselves when we realized that we could no longer trust this agency to continue with them. BUT - had we not done that, we would not be in that 'line' and would not be submitting our dossier until at least mid 2009. In other words - it would have put us back and entire YEAR.

Anyways, we are thankful to have this big step of getting the 171H.