Where are we now?

I haven't had much time to write this weekend.  I have to help my son prepare for a speech, put an outline together for a school project, and work on some algebra homework this afternoon.  We tried to go out and do some fundraising yesterday but didn't get to do much. I got called in to work for a bit and then had dinner with other couples from the church who have adopted.  All in all, a very busy weekend.

If you are wondering where we are on the adoption now, not much farther than we were the last time I posted.  We are collecting the information we need to finish the home study.  They require a lot of financial documents that take a while to pull together.  We have not received the results of the FBI criminal history check yet, which is required before the home study can be completed. We have filled out our paperwork for United States Immigration Services and are getting it ready to mail this week.  I have my medical exam scheduled for this week and Vernon has his medical exam schedule for the first week in November.  These medical exams are required both for the home study and for the adoption dossier.

So many people ask about how much things cost so I will give you a run down so far.  The home study in Mississippi for international adoptions is about $1400.  We only have to pay half of that this time around since they are classifying our home study as an update instead of doing a whole new one.  The immigration application is $975.  We also need to commit to a translator by making the initial payment of $2000, which needs to be done soon so we can get the official documents from them to start working on.  

For those of you who are planning to attend the spaghetti lunch next Sunday please contact us and let us know.  We have to buy the food this week and right now we don't know how much food to buy.  Lots of people have told us they will be coming but haven't actually purchased their tickets so we don't really even have an estimated head count.  If you could please email us at vltygart@att.net .  Also, I will be generating an adoption update group in my email so that when we are in Ukraine and have specific prayer needs that we can't post publicly on the blog I can send a prayer request to our prayer warriors via email.

Well, off to do homework.  If I had a degree for every time I finished high school I would have 4 and be half way through my 5th.  Just think, I get to start 9th grade all over again when the adoption is complete.  I have to wonder how many college degrees I might have one day!!!  I wonder what degrees I will be helping them get too!!