"Soon"

An update today from our agency. Our Letter of Invitation is at the Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). The MFA will assign it a registration number making it official. Our agency expects to receive the LOI "soon". We're keeping our fingers crossed we can still travel in May but realistically are thinking June.

In the meantime, I thought I'd practice posting pictures to the blog. Here is a recent pic of our sweet dog Abby.

Thinking Summer

New plans for the LOI. Here's the latest. The doctor running the program is not currently available for contact so we cannot get an update on our LOI until late next week (earliest). That being said, we're being told to look for the LOI sometime in May. So, we'll likely travel in June. Needless to say, we're kind-of bummed out. Average temps in Kostanai for June hover around 85 degrees so we'll get to experience summer vs. spring-time weather! The good news... no snow boots so more room for packing!

New timeline for LOI

OOPPPS! So much for four weeks for our LOI. Yesterday we were told to expect our LOI to arrive around the early part of April. So, we wait a little more. The good news is we might miss most of the snow since temperatures hover around 45 degrees in April.

Waiting for our Letter of Invitation (LOI)

Well..... we're still waiting for word on our LOI. Once this is in hand, we can apply for our visas and make travel arrangements.

For now, we're working through our to-do lists. Tim's found a technology solution to overcome the very, very slow dial up internet access available in Kaz. We'll be renting a satellite device that allows us internet access from anywhere in the world at breakneck speed. The device weighs less than 4 pounds and is smaller than a laptop. It's the same device reporters and our military use in the field. It's pricey but worth the cost if it keeps Tim working from Kaz. The only catch is to work effectively, the satellite must face south. So, I've let our agency know we'll need our hotel or apartment to have a south-facing window. I'll bet that tops the list of "strange requests"!

We're still hopeful the LOI comes this week!

Four to Five Weeks?????

Well.... we received word today that we'll likely be required to spend four to five weeks in Kaz, not the three maybe four originally communicated. Apparently, court now occurs 8 - 10 days AFTER the 15-day bonding period ends making trip one a minimum of 27 days. So, we're looking at our options. Neither of us want to be in Kaz that long leaving JC behind (despite the good care and fun I'm confident he'll be having at Aunt Jill and Uncle E's home!). Plus, Tim's concerned that a slow dial-up connection will keep him too far out-of-touch from work for too long.

We've asked if we can make this a three trip process. Come home after the 15-day bonding ends. Travel back 8 - 10 days later for court. Travel home for the three-week + time needed to process our child's paperwork and then travel back to pick up our newest dude-ette! Lots of travel but it may buy us an extra 10+ days at home which is significant when you're missing a little guy, a grumpy old dog and work that pays the bills.

We should learn more soon. The good news is our agency still expects us to receive our Letter of Invitation (LOI) to travel around March 15th making our "wheels up" date around the first of April.

Let us catch you up...

Arriving home from Russia after adopting JC in March 2006, many of you probably heard me say "I'll never do that again!". Well, never say never! Here we go again... Let me catch you up on our "Journey for Jill".

We've always wanted JC to have a brother or sister but the process of adopting through Russia was more than we felt we could stomach again. So, we started researching our options and became very excited about Kazakhstan. Why Kaz? For many reasons, but mostly because JC's birth mother was Kazak so he'd share the same heritage as his little brother/sister.

We officially applied to adopt a child from Kazakhstan in July 2006. We're using the same agency we used for JC's adoption and we'll be their first Kazakhstan clients. While being the first poses some risk, we have confidence our journey will be a success because (1) our agency is really good and (2) the same doctor they used in Russia (who found JC for us!) will be leading their efforts in Kaz. So, we agreed to be Kaz "guinea pigs".

After contracting with our agency, the next step was the paperwork chase. We won't bore you with all of the paperwork requirements but suffice it to say we've killed a mini forest and more trees will come down before it is all said and done. After being fingerprinted four times: FBI, DFS, MO Hwy Patrol and Division of Homeland Security, gathering references from friends, family & our church, opening up all of our financial records and more, we finally completed our "dossier" in mid-October. Here are the steps our dossier has taken:

1) Off to Kaz to be translated to Russian (the official legal language of Kaz)
2) Back to the US to the Kaz Consulate for authentication
3) Back overseas to Kaz to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs
4) Forwarded to Kaz's Ministry of Education
5) Forwarded to the local region's (where we'll be adopting from) Ministry of Education

As it stands today, it appears that we'll travel to the Kostanai region. This area is located in Northern Kaz, just North and slightly west of Astana. It sits close to the Kaz/Russia border. You'll see Kostanai spelled about five different ways making it a hard area to research.

Remember the cute pictures we had of JC before we left for our first trip to Russia? Well, this journey will be different. Kaz law prohibits us from receiving a referral. Therefore, we'll be traveling to Kaz "blind" meaning, we'll not know what child we're traveling to adopt. Rather, once we arrive at the orphanage assigned to us by the Ministry of Education, we'll be interviewed by the director and then shown children meeting our requests. We've requested a child under the age of two. After being shown children available for adoption, we'll have the very hard decision of selecting which child we'll adopt. Uggg! Can you imagine? But, we have faith God will direct us to the right child for our family!

After we select our child, we'll then spend a mandatory 14 day bonding period getting to know him/her prior to going to court to complete the adoption. We hope our first trip will last three weeks maybe 3 1/2 and no more. After court, we'll fly home (without our new kiddo) to wait for all of the paperwork to be complete. We should be home for about 3 weeks before flying back to Kaz, collecting our newest addition, processing through the US Embassy in Kaz and flying home to a happy crowd of friends/family.

So.... what happens to JC and Abby during this 3, possibly 4, week time frame????? Lucky JC will get some real bonding time with Aunt Jill, Uncle Eric and cousins Julia and Laney. We can't thank Jill and Eric enough for actually volunteering for this monumental task! Of course, GG & Grandpa are on the hook too! Abby will be well-cared for by Lizzie, our very experienced house sitter, babysitter and friend.

As it stands today, we've been told we'll travel soon. We're thinking we may be Kaz bound by the beginning to mid-April.

Jill or Jake... Whichever you turn out to be, we cannot wait to welcome you to our family.