BACKGROUND INFO!

Here is our timeline so far

January 4, 2005: After many years of contemplating adoption, foster care . . . on this morning – Mark and I realized that we were on same page! Uh-oh!! Committed to pray about it as we tried to figure out next step.

January 5, 2005: Got call out of the blue from a friend, Jenny, who had no idea that we had even contemplated adoption (only known her for a few years). She asked if we were adopting a child – she had been reading in James about caring for the orphans and she felt that God had laid it on her heart that we were adopting!

January 6, 2005: Called Wayne (our brother-in-law) who is very familiar with international adoption asking him to help us discern God's will in this and thinking he might give us reasons why we shouldn't adopt - he could only come up with MANY reasons why we SHOULD adopt! Deneen Turner, who represents Global Village International Adoption Agency was coming to meet with Wayne that morning to discuss mission trip to Ukraine - so he said he'd pass information about us on to her! - wonder what he said about us!! Told the kids - later found out that Mark had already told Rachel and Rachel had already told Wesley!! Anyway they were all THRILLED!

January 8, 2005: Signed contract with adoption agency and sent first check!! That made it seem real!

January 13, 2005: First visit with our social worker, Sandy from Children's Home of Northern KY.

January 21, 2005: Told extended family of our news - some weren't even surprised! Was supposed to mail paperwork to INS (Immigration Naturalization Services) in Louisville and didn’t get to Post Office. Got call from Social worker that night saying – DON”T MAIL IT – procedures have just changed and we can hand deliver application and get fingerprinted on same day – saving about 42 days of processing time.

January 27, 2005: Mark and Kim headed to Louisville – what an adventure! Lots of waiting. Lots of interesting people to watch. The folks at the INS office sure don’t get stressed out about long lines – they take their time! After about 4 hours of sitting around, we had turned in our application, paid our fee, and had been fingerprinted.

February 8, 2005: Sandy Hamilton came to our home for homestudy.

February 14, 2005 – Traveled to Nashville to meet with our agency. Carrie, Mark’s sister, accompanied us!

February 22, 2005: Home study mailed to INS!

April 14, 2005: On Day 58 – received I600A in mail!

April 26, 2005: Picked up Kerri Compton (friend who is adopting from China) and headed to Frankfort for apostilling of documents. A few things that we needed – but they were great at the capitol and after a visit to Vital Statistics and a few faxes and phone calls, we had all of our paperwork. Pegge Woolums, our “labor coach” took us out to lunch to celebrate! After going over the list for our dossier and comparing to our paperwork – Mark drove me to Kinko’s in Cincinnati – and I Fedexed the dossier to Yuri (our facilitator) in the Ukraine.

April 29, 2005: Dossier rec’d by Yuri and he took it to translators.

May 24, 2005: Agency said that as far as they know dossier has still not been submitted to NAC.

June 28, 2005: Got word that dossier is at NAC – not sure when it was submitted.

July 5. 2005: Received email from agency. Yuri has requested that we fax a letter to him to deliver to the NAC requesting August 22 (woo hoo) as our appointment date. Upon receiving this email, we typed up letter – tried to fax it from Mark’s office, but international faxes are rather tricky so went to Kinko. Faxed to Yuri and sent original to him via FedEx.