4 Years Home With Makai

We came home with Makai from St. Petersburg 4 years ago September 4. It ended up being much more expensive than we thought it would be, around $46,000! It ended up being much more challenging than we thought it would be- 3 back and forth trips to Russia, 16 vials of blood drawn from us in a whole day of physical exam in a Russian hospital- but overall our life would not be the same without Makai.

We finished our 3 years of required reporting just as Russia terminated Americans from adopting any more Russian children. We weren't too surprised this happened because it was very obvious when we were there in 2009 that the Russians were making it as difficult as possible for Americans to adopt. But even with all of the hassles we are so glad we adopted Makai.

It was the gracious hand of God that led us to him. We were scheduled to go to Bryansk, Russia when they discovered our blog and told us we could not come because we dared to discuss details of our adoption publicly.  When this door closed for us we discovered our agency had just received the file on a boy in St. Petersburg who was to be adopted by an American family who had backed out at the last minute and did not go pick him up after they had been approved for the adoption. This family cited their fears that he was deaf as to why they did not pick him up. It turns out he is only 'deaf' toward anyone he does not want to listen to and the orphanage workers in St. Petersburg told us the ex-adoptive mother from the States was high strung and weird which would probably explain why Makai did not listen to her!

Makai is pure energy. When we first visited him it was as if all of the other children were in black and white and he was in color. He did not fit there and was restraining himself the best he could until the day he could escape the confined life the orphanage offered him. When we first met him we had the chance to play alone on the playground and he took us to a crack between the panels in the large concrete wall surrounding the orphanage and pointed outside to the street showing us where he wanted to go. A few days later we lifted him up so he could see over the wall and for the first time he quieted down and stared with disbelief at the big world outside those walls.

It was cruel as we had to leave him at the orphanage day after day with him crying to go with us until it was finally time that he could leave with us. On the day we picked him up he cried and screamed bloody murder because he had apparently been taught never, ever to leave in a car with anyone. We were drawing lots of attention so we scooped him up into the van and headed out. He screamed until he saw the gate open leading out of the orphanage at which time he got quiet and just stared.

Since that day it has been non stop with Makai. He adapted great, learned English fast, and is growing like a weed.

We have uploaded all of the video's we made from the orphanage and Russia...
Meeting Makai for the first time
Makai meeting his future family
Playing With Makai
Makai showing cracks in wall
Coloring at orphanage
Bubbles
Wrestling
Playing Ball and Makai dance
Leaving the orphanage
Leaving the orphanage part 2
Apartment in St. Petersburg
Playing at the Hilton hotel in Moscow
More Play at Hilton in Moscow
Telling us the Names of His Group
On Plane Leaving For America
First Time to Fly
Meeting His Brothers and Sisters

No Longer Blogging

We ran into a significant difficulty in March 2009 with posting blogs due to a Russian law that prohibits sharing confidential information about a Russian adoption. Therefore we are no longer posting blogs about the adoption other than to give very general information...

Update

We will be traveling to St. Petersburg Russia in August or September 2009 for court and to bring home Makai. If you would like to follow our process please comment on this post with your email address. Thanks!

Change

If you would like to keep up with our adoption please comment on this blog and include your email address. We will be sending out emails about our adoption progress from time to time.

And We Wait...

Foreign adoption is so funny. Rush. Rush. Rush. Get lots of paperwork done and then wait. We spoke with our adoption agency earlier this week to see what is the next step. We found out we are waiting for the initial court hearing. We gave Olga in Bryansk power of attorney to represent us in Russian adoption court for the initial hearing. (If we had not done this we would have to make 4 trips to Russia!) Russian adoption court gives her 2-4 weeks notice of the court hearing. Hand In Hand is communicating with Galina to see if she can get the court to give her any kind of an idea when they might schedule the preliminary hearing... So... for that we wait...

Travel Packet!

We received our travel packet and there are a 'few' things we have to have for the trip:

• copy of I-171H
• copy of State Home Study Approval
• copy of all birth certificates and marriage licenses
• copy of passport's
• proof of USCIS Poverty Minimum Guidelines
• copy of employment letters
• copies of last 3 years tax returns
• I-600 (Blue Form)
• I-604 (Determination on Child for Adoption)
• Form DS-230 (application for immigrant visa)
• Affadavit concerning exemption from Immigrant Vaccination Requirements for a foreign adopted child
• Powers of Attorney for U.S. Embassy

The travel packet also contained a 'few' forms:

• notice regarding passport
• your region information sheet
• estimated expenses for an adoption from your region
• suggested orphanage donations
• things to bring for adoption travel
• copy of important numbers
• hotel information
• humanitarian aid letter for customs
• department of state caution
• questions for the caregivers
• referral/travel affadavit
• visa packet
• U.S. embassy moscow registration form
• authorization to publish
• placement agreement
• progress report agreement

Travel Packet

We just received word from Hand In Hand International Adoptions that they are sending us our travel packet in preperation for when we receive permission to travel to Russia.

Note from our Adoption Agency on January 13, 2008

No info on your appointment yet. Things are moving well in Bryansk however. We had some court dates and a first trip in December. You are next in line.

Our Dossier is in Russia!

Our dossier was sent to Russia the week after Thanksgiving. This is a significant piece of the process that has taken 6 months to accomplish. There were a few additional documents required for the adoption court in Russia that I had apostilled at the Texas Secretary of State office in Austin the Monday after Thanksgiving on the way to Fort Worth when I was taking my mother home after she had spent Thanksgiving week with us.

Now We Wait

I drove our completed dossier to the Texas Secretary of State Office in Austin on Monday November 3 so that our I-171 H could be apostille'd. The Secretary of State office is just across the street south of the Texas state capitol. A frind of ours in Colorado suggested that it could save a couple of weeks in our timeline by hand carrying our remaining documents for apostille in case there were any docuements that had to be redone. As it turned out the I-171H was not done correctly. The requirement is to send a copy of the I-171 H that is notarized and apostille'd to Russia. The problem was that we had not signed the copy that we had notarized so a new copy had to be made and notarized before it could receive an apostille. After a brief scare I ran down the street to the UPS store to have a new copy notarized. The whole process took about two hours after which I anxiously packed up the dossier and next day'd it to Hand In Hand.

The dossier contained: an 8x10 family photo, two 5x7 family photos, 12 pictures of our house, a photo notary statement, a letter of intent to adopt, 'Form 1', 'Form 2', three marriage certificates, three copies of our passport pages, letters of committment and obligation, psychological evaluation, letter of medical approval, doctor's license, financial statement, copy of deed to our home, declaration of attorney regarding property ownership, letters of employment, FBI clearances, Power of attorney for Olga in Bryansk, I-171 H, and a check for $6500. All of these documents were notarized and apostille'd. One document had two notarizations!

One of the more amazing things we have discovered is the Russian Ministry of Education searchable orphan database. (There is a link at the right bottom of this blog.) It contains pictures and information about Russian orphans. It currently appears to contain information about 75,795 boys and 52,007 girls. It can be translated via google translate...

WE HAVE OUR I-171H

Our Advance Processing of Orphan Petition approval arrived today. This means we have permission to immigrate a child from Russia- we are good to go now!

Adoption Process, God, Finances, and Number of Children

The last couple of weeks have been really busy with the adoption. October 9 we received our “ORPHAN” letter from INS. October 10 we were fingerprinted at the local INS service center. October 13 we had 19 documents for our dossier notarized. October 14 we mailed the dossier documents to Austin for apostille. And then October 17 we applied for our adoption loan.

We are waiting for our INS approval letter which should come anytime in the next couple of weeks. Once it arrives we are going to hand carry the home study and a copy of the INS approval letter to Austin to have them apostilled. At that point we can send our dossier documents to the adoption agency for translation and then off to Russia.

None of our adoptions have ever gone like we planned. In 1996 we traveled to pick up 1 child and came home with 2. In 2001 we traveled to pick out 2 children and God revealed a third. This time it is on our hearts to adopt 2 children but our finances say 1 child.

However there is more to this story…

A couple who have been our mentors the last few years told us it has been on their heart, for some reason, that God was bringing us 4 kids. It might have just been the pizza they ate a day or two before but coming from them causes us to pay attention. Therefore we decided it might work better to have our paperwork set up to anticipate God’s sense of humor in never letting things happen the way we plan.

In 2001 we had a major headache changing from 2 to 3 kids because our INS paperwork had to change. This time we discovered that the INS paperwork allows us to ask permission for more than we might actually adopt- so we completed that form indicating we would adopt between 1 and 4 children. We talked to our social worker about the INS form but never asked her to approve us for that many, and in fact she reminded us that it did not matter what we put on the INS form because they would work from the number of children she approved on the home study. However, without asking, she approved us for 4 but then, at the request of the agency, changed that number to 2 in the home study since we are requesting our adoption agency to locate 1 child for us.

We have no idea what God is going to do but we know that we are approved for up to 4 children with minor paperwork modifications and we know that we are requesting our adoption agency to locate 1 child. We know that the effort to nail down how many children we are adopting is just odd enough to point toward the reality that God is working a plan that we will not recognize till it is all done!

Hurricane Ike and Adoption Plans

Hurricane Ike slowed us down 2-3 weeks. The storm itself was pretty wild- non stop heavy, heavy wind and rain from 11:45 PM until 10:00 AM! We came out o.k. but about 1 in every 5 houses in our neighborhood had roof damage. There just was not any power, gas, food, or working stop lights for the next week around here- glad we had a generator, lots of extra food, and gas.

Our social worker next day 'Fed Exed' our home study to the Houston INS the day before the storm. The next day delivery did not get there until two and one half weeks later- Fed Ex kept it safe in Tennessee until Houston INS could receive it. So that delayed us by 3 weeks...

We will send our documents to our adoption agency for translation and on to Russia as soon as we receive confirmation from the Houston INS which we anticipate will be around the first of November. We also received word a couple of weeks ago that one of our fees had just increased $3,000 so we sat down and evaluated all of our expenses and decided that it would be best to adopt 1 instead of 2 children. Our paperwork will be such that if God has other plans for us we can easily change back to adopting 2. But right now we are deciding if we are adopting Marty or Makai! :)

Time Line

Our home study and psych evaluation went a little bit slower than we had hoped so I modified our time line. We have not done anything on the adoption in the last couple of weeks due to Hurricane Ike. The Houston INS office who is processing our petition to adopt a foreign born orphan has probably lost a week or two so our time line might end up needing to be extended a little more. We wish it would go faster but realize God directs the timing to achieve exactly what he wants...

Our Daily Prayer

Back in June we picked out the names Marty and Makai for our new boys. That might be the names we stick with but our daily prayer in the Shoulders house has been that God would take care of Marty and Makai...

Our Passion

We are stepping out on faith to adopt 2 boys. Our agency, Hand In Hand International Adoptions, is steering us towards the Bryansk region of Russia. Bryansk is one of the few regions in Russia that is still willing to adopt more than one un-related child to a family. That along with the fact that Bryansk does not give families any advance information about the children they are matching makes us ideally suited for that region because we learned a long time ago that ultimately we had to trust everyone involved in the adoption process in Russia- not for the feint of heart!

This adoption is going to cost around $50,000. We prayed for over a year about the financial piece and the Lord continues to focus our attention on adopting the boys. We are taking out loans for the agency and US fees which is about half. An organization called Kingdom Kids is helping us raise the money to help cover the orphanage and Russian support fees. We are seeking people to partner with us in this adoption journey. You will find a link to Kingdom Kids below.

Application Sent to Hand in Hand International Adoptions

It has been upon our hearts to go back to Russia for 5 or 6 years but it was in October of 2006 that God made it clear to us that we would adopt again. Since then we have been praying and considering when and how. The passion to adopt grew to the point that we began praying and talking about it with the kids. Once we pulled the name books out it was a done deal! The application to Hand In Hand International Adoptions in Tucson, Arizona is in the mail as of May 20, 2008. HERE WE GO!