15 months ago today.....

Daryl gave me permission to look at more children who were up for adoption from Bulgaria on Reece's Rainbow.  I had already sent him links to several children, but so far none of them had stood out to us.

15 months ago today, early in the morning I saw that there were a couple of new little girls listed, and one of them had short dark hair was in an outfit that was blue and white - she really looked like a little boy!  Well, I just had to see what she'd look like in a more feminine color. So I used PhotoShop and changed the blue to lavender and added a little flower to her hair:

There, now she looked like a little girl! Then I sent the photo to Daryl, and told him that I had edited the photo...he replied that I could begin to look seriously into adopting Priscilla.  I was surprised, and he said I could ask him later what had convinced him that this was the little girl we should pursue.  I found out a few weeks later, when we were almost ready send in the paperwork and money to be committed to her and put her file on hold for us, that Daryl had decided she was the one because I had Photo-Shopped her!  God does use mysterious ways indeed!

Soon after we made inquiries into the possibilities of adopting "Priscilla" we were sent some updated photos and some videos, which only confirmed that we wanted to adopt this sweet little girl who so needed a home and proper love and care.

15 months is a long time to wait.  I'm sure that there has never been a human mother who has been pregnant for 15 months....and I thought 9 months was along time to wait to meet my newest child each time God has blessed us!

It is especially a long time to wait as we have held her in our arms, fed her meals, held her tight and made her laugh....it has been nearly 6 months since I last held her, last watched her eyes light up in surprise and delight.

When we started this process were saw that the average time of adopting from Bulgaria was around 12 - 14 months, but that it could be quicker.  Here we are 4 weeks overdue and over 2 weeks to go.  

You'd think that as the day draws near that we will fly away to have her in our arms forever, it would get easier, but it doesn't.  You'd think with my busy life the days would go by quickly, but they don't.  sure some days go be fast, but every morning and every evening I have this feeling of emptiness.  In some ways I think it is getting harder.  But God is giving me grace, and every time I start to feel bummed, something comes my way and makes the moments easier to bear.

This week I was able to forward our court decree so that we can add Christy to our medical insurance.  Today I made her very first medical appointment!  She will be going down to Seattle to be seen by the specialists at the UW Adoption Medical Clinic.  They work with the UW specialists and Seattle Children's Hospital to help international orphans get the testing the medical help they need as soon as they come home.

Today I remembered that I had purchased fabric to make her a raggedy blanket and a wrap for carrying her, so now I am looking forward to getting those done this week and next!  I also re-worked my packing list so make things more organized and easy to find!  Every day I do something to further prepare - like tonight - another meal is going in the freezer for the kids to use when we are away.  Step by step, resting on God's perfect timing!

Oh Christy, your mama is coming.  

We have our travel dates!

We will be going to bring Christy home in the first part of May.

We will be gone for over two weeks once you count in travel time.

Pray for us as we continue to prepare for our trip!  I am working on putting together some gifts for Christy's care providers, and I am considering getting some ladies together to make some rag quilts for the children in her group home - email me if you are interested in helping with the quilts (purchasing flannel/donating money for flannel or sewing a quilt and shipping it to me if you aren't local, or even cutting the squares if you are local!).

I have booked our flights and we are pleased with the layovers and such.  I was also able to book our rooms for our time in Sofia.  Our agency will have to book the hotel near Christy's group home as hotel.com did not have any rooms available at the hotels they work with there.  Something about a holiday that day.

So I won't be posting much of anything for a while since we are basically now waiting to go, but have over 7 weeks of waiting!

I am working on a blanket for Christy, and have made a hat and a sweater, so when I complete that I might post photos - they are turning out so cute!

Blessings to all!

She is officially a Seventh Sister now!

In a courtroom in Bulgaria at 10:55 am their time, Preslava was pronounced to be our child!

She is now legally Christiana Preslava Einfeld

She is an orphan no more!

For the first time in her life, Priscilla has a family, parents, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles and cousins!!!  She doesn't know it yet, but her life will changes forever soon!

We started the process 13 months ago, officially committed to her on Jan 28.  We hope to be taking her our of her group home by the end of March, or the first part of April!  Pray for speedy processing in getting her birth certificate, as that is what is needed before we can get travel dates!

We will be going to bring her home in the next month or so - I'll keep you posted on the progress of course!

Here's the announcement and her new name!

Praise God - They Worked Things Out!

I have no details, only that dossiers will be headed to court this week!

I am so thankful that this little speed bump is behind us!

Here is Christy's suitcase (you can barely see it beneath the pile) piled high with items that have been donates recently - pajamas, shoes, a coat, tights and more!  The top item, the sweater, I finished crocheting yesterday.  I'm working on a hat, and after that some slippers and a blanket!  I fell in love with the variegated yarn, and it is called "Giggles"!  So fun to work with as it is bright and cheery!

Also, a little background on the sweater/blanket thing - for all of my children I have crocheted a set - for most it was an layette and for some it was a sweater/hat/blanket set.  I realized last month that I needed to do this for Christy and set about to get busy!

So, I am hoping and praying that my next blog post will come VERY soon and share that our dossier has gone to court...then we'll get assigned a judge, then get a court date, then she'll be ours, and then we'll get travel dates!  The list of steps in this adoption is now getting short enough that I can remember them!

Urgent Pray Request for Families Waiting Court Like Us!

Oh, I so miss this precious girly - can't wait to feel her in my arms again!

Marin for the Schildback family

Nellie for the Schildbach family

The Offices of the head honcho in Christy's country had the vice minister sign some of the dossiers that are headed to court (ours could be in the 15 dossiers that are involved in this, or our is just behind these).  This was done in order to speed adoptions along as the minister is a very busy position and sometimes it takes quite a while to get signatures. This was approved by the minister and is legal, but one of the family court judges is saying that he will deny any adoptions that have the vice ministers signature.  This would not mean that the adoptions would not go through, but that they would have to be resubmitted, causing about a month's delay.

Hannah for the Carr family!
Here's their Reece's Rainbow Grant Page

Today we found out that the minister's office has held off on sending these dossiers to court and are trying to get it worked out so that they will not cause delays with these (and future) adoptions.

Ria for the Mayr family!

Please pray that this can be worked out quickly and favorably for these (and all other families in process) dossiers, and that in the end it may means a speedier process so these precious children can be home forever!

Marnie for the Horton family

Gary for the Horton Family

I've included some links here to families the I know (who use the same adoption agency we use and I have gotten to know through a Facebook group) who could be effected by this.  Please consider praying for each family specifically, and it would be seriously awesome if you can also see if these families still need financial help as they are getting so close to needing the money to make this final step in their journey to bring their babies home!

Trinity for the Johnson Family

Felicity for the Johnson Family

Remember these are mommies and daddies who have held their precious children, said goodbye to their babies with special needs, and are now counting the days until they can ransom them and bring them home.  This is THE hardest part of the adoption process.  Waiting and having nothing to do but pray.  The possibility of an extra month's delay just seems cruel to both children and parents.

(I have visited these family's blogs and some of them list the country where these children are located, please do not include this country in your comments, thank you!)

Christy ("Priscilla" on Reece's Rainbow) and Daddy....can't wait for this to happen again!

Another Big Step Closer!

Today I received the letter that says our I800 application to immigrate Christy was approved!  So the US is willing to allow her to join our family and come to live in the US.  Yay!

On a side note, this week the family of a little girl that we recognized while we were visiting Christy are leaving to bring their little girl home. I have arranged it so that they are bringing "Thick It" to allow Christy's care takers to thicken the water they give her making it easier for them to give her water, and easier for Christy to take the water without choking!  They are also taking some toys that I sent.  Most of the toys are for all the children there (they all LOVED the toys we brought for Christy to play with and left most of them there).  But one we purchased just for Christy.  She has severe reflux (common in children with Down Sydrome), so they keep her in her highchair for 30 minutes after eating.  She is usually left alone during this time with nothing to do.  So we are sending her a toy that attaches to the tray (with a suction cup) so she'll have a toy to play with while she sits in her chair!  Isn't God amazing to orchestrate that a fellow Washington State family is adopting a little girl who lives in the same group home as our daughter???

This is Christy's room, her own highchair and play crib for sleeping in.

We still have many more steps yet for our adoption to take, while we wait.

Right now I am waiting for the documents that we sent to get appostilled to come back.  Evidently, the Washington Secretary of State has different policies from most of the other SOS's in the US, so I have to re-do both documents...actually it becomes 4 documents.  We had "bundled" our medical updates (Daryl and Mine) together, and we had done the same with our local police background checks.  They were rejected.

I have gotten her police background checks (they now require that the notary be done in the police office).  We are waiting for the medical updates to come back so we can do a cover sheet for each medical update form, and then we'll send both right back to be apostilled.

So here's what happens with our paperwork.

Now that our I-800 has been approved, it is sent to the National Visa Center.  It takes up to 7 days process the approval and forward it to the US Embassy in Christy's county.  This will trigger the setting up of a visa interview.

Christy loved to "taste test" things...like your clothes, your face...your arm.
She's such a lovely, unique little girl!

At this meeting the US Embassy representative will review our home study, dossier and the child's information and will approve the adoption to continue (Lord willing!).  Sometimes they have questions about something and require additional paperwork.  If they approve everything, they will issue the Article 5 the following day.  We get notification of this via email!

Once the Article 5 is received, it is translated and authenticated, which takes a little over a week.  Then this is submitted to the right big wig along with all the second stage dossier documents that we have sent in.  This will mean that our dossier is officially complete.

At this point, it goes through a series of steps that  take about a month to complete.  Basic paper chasing, too boring to list here.  Once it goes through all the right hands and receives the required signatures, the dossier is taken to the courts.

Once the dossier is sent to the courts, it is assigned to a judge.  This take 14 days, officially.  Once assigned to a judge, the judge has 7 days to assign the court date.  Some judges require additional information from the adopting family before court, others do not.

On the day of court, the adoptive family is represented by an attorney.  We are notified via email the day of court about the outcome.  The adoption is granted unless the judge of prosecutor asks for additional information, in which case, court will be postponed....

Once the adoption is granted, there is a 7 day wait period before the adoption is finalized, and after that it takes 3 - 5 days to obtain the signed court decree from the judge.

Once the court decree is obtained, the new birth certificate is applied for, which takes up to 5 business days.

We will be given travel dates for our "gotcha trip" after the birth certificate is obtained.

Then we get to go bring her home.  The second trip requires at least 12 days in country, so we will be away from home about 2 weeks.  There is quite the process that happens once we get her in our arms again...but that is for another blog post!

Please pray with us that we will sail through this process with no more snags, and that the political climate in Christy's country will remain stable so that many more orphans can come home and be with their forever families!

Praise God! Awesome Announcement, Plus Something Special!

Our Dossier was approved at the adoption committee meeting yesterday in Priscilla's country!  This is called the "verbal referral".  This is a HUGE step in my book.  There are a couple of other HUGE steps in the process, but this is the really the first HUGE step!  I am so excited I am shaking!  I really didn't not think our dossier would even see the light of day at that meeting!

PRAISE GOD!  The sooner each step happens, the soon this precious little girl will be released from an orphanage and begin a real life of learning and growing!

I was even looking at luggage yesterday when I was shopping for something to wear to Jeremy's wedding.  Marshall's had some very nice, discounted luggage.  I will have to go take another look again soon!

So, what's next?  Our dossier will need to get a signature from the Minister of Justice.  I was told that this will take 2 - 3 weeks.  That is called the "Written Referral."  When we get our Written Referral we will also get the dates when we can travel to meet her!  It looks from her like our trip will be either late October or early November.

We have had a little secret that we were waiting for a special time to share with all of you, and now is that moment - we intend to change her name!  Priscilla is not her real name.  Her real name I can not share online, but is sounds a lot like Priscilla.  But in her videos, the ladies working with her call her "Prissy."  While that sounds like a cute name, in our culture, being "prissy" in our culture is not exactly a good connotation, is it?  So last spring and early summer Daryl and I were working on coming up with a name that we liked that would have a nick name that would sound like her nick name.  We have chosen to keep her real name (yet to be announced after she is officially ours), as her middle name. So this is to announce to the world, that we have chosen a name for our new daughter.....

We will be calling her "Christy" for a nickname as it sounds so similar to "Prissy."  We have already begun to refer to her as Christy in our home and will even begin to do this with other as we share new of her, so that when she comes home (oh that sounds good), we will be used to calling her that and not "Priscilla."

"Christiana" means follower of Christ.  Her real (future) middle name (the one that is her first name now) means "Glory" or "the glory of."  So her two names can mean the glory of a follower of Christ, or the glory of following Christ.  I LOVE this!  Have you ever thought about the fact that if you are a follower of Christ, that your have been ADOPTED into the family of God?  Have you ever thought about how adoption is a wonderful physical example of our adoption into God's family?  I have thought on this a little in the past, but not really and truly dwelt on it until more recent months.

Now, as an adoptive parent, I see so much more.  I see more of God in adoption.  "Christy" is like a future believer who has not felt the call of God in her life.  She has done NOTHING to earn our love.  We love her because she is ours.  God has given us this love, as He is the author of Love.  We have loved her before she could even imagine loving us.  Do you see it?

A future believer often has no idea that God even exists, let alone loves him/her.  Christy has no idea that we even exist.  She has no idea that we love her...she may even have no idea what love it.  She has no idea that we have been working for months to bring her home.  We have been loving her and praying for her.  We have been working with so many people and entities in order to set everything up for the blessed day when she will finally know that we exist. So many people are praying for her too.  That day is rapidly coming, but she has no idea!  It's like that first time that a future believer stumbles across the message of salvation.  He/she has no idea that so much work was done to make that happen in their life.  But God had it planed for years/decades/centuries...really from the foundation of the earth.  We have been planning and working on bringing Christy to the point of "finding" us, yet she still has no idea.  Do you see it?

I now realize that God has truly loved me with an everlasting love - one that stretches back forever, and stretches on into eternity.  (I know, that is where earthly adoption shows that is is only a glimpse into our adoption by God, but that makes it so much better, as adoption is such a wonderful thing, and yet we can know that our adoption by God into His family is so much more glorious!).

So, very soon, we will plan that moment when Christy will first find out that we even exist.  That moment when her eyes will see us standing before her.  She will really have no idea what it all means, and that we are going to be her parents.  But she will know that we exist.  We will spend a couple of hours with her each day, in the morning and then again in the afternoon.  For five short days.  Then we will be seemingly gone from her life.  But not completely.  We plan to purchase a little book that we can use to record our voices reading this book to her in English.  Her caretaker will be able to help her to listen/read this book everyday while we are working to bring her home.  We will also be leaving a little photo album of our family and our home for her to look at each day too.  So she will continue to become familiar with our faces and get used to the images of her future home.  We can hope that she will grow in her familiarity of us and our home and maybe, just maybe, begin to love us in return. Do you see it? 

 Do you see that God gave us that?  He has given us His Holy Spirit so we can hear the voice of God.  He has given us His Holy Word so that we can get a glimpse of our eternal home.  Both before the moment of our salvation and after, He gave us His book that is a recording of His love for us and who our family is.  Do you see it?

There will come a day that Christy will be ours, 100% ours.  She will become a part of our family.  She will learn so many things.  She will be fed and she will grow.  It might take years for her to truly understand all that is being done and all that will be done to make her a part of our family, but she will know.  She will know that she is loved.  Do you see it?

If you don't see what I am sharing with you, and you are not a part of God's family, then maybe this is the moment that God has been preparing for you.  He has been loving your since the foundation of the earth.  He has been loving you and preparing for the moment when you become aware that He has been working to bring you into His family.  He even sent His son, Jesus Christ, to earth over 2000 years ago to take your sins upon Himself and to pay the penalty for every one of them, so that you can become His child.  But you need to do something.  You need to believe that Christ is the Son of God, that he lived a perfect, sinless life.  You need to believe that He took your sins upon Himself as He hung on the cross.  That He died in your place.  He paid the penalty for your sin.  You need to believe that He conquered death by rising from the dead on the third day so that you might have eternal life with Him.  All you need to do is believe, confess your sinfulness and ask God to save you.  He's been working and waiting.  He knew you would be in His family.  He chose you.  So ask Him today - ask Him to come into your life, to save you from your sins and to become Lord of your life.  No longer to live in your old ways, but to become a part of the family of God.  To live a new life.  To grow in your love for Him and to learn to live a life that pleases him.  A life that reflects the love of God to the world.  A life that brings glory to God.  

Do you see it now?

If you need to know more about how to become a child of God. please visit This Website or contact a pastor or believer that you know to find help to be adopted into God's family.

Our Dossier has been Submitted!

We received news early this morning that today in Priscilla's country (it's night time there now) our dossier was registered with the Minister of Justice's (MOJ) office!  This was the news we have been hoping to hear for a while now.

What's next?  Our dossier needs to be approved by the adoption committee.  They were supposed to have their first meeting after the month long holiday, but it was cancelled.  I have no idea when the next meeting will be and whether or not our dossier will even come to the top of the stack at that meeting.

Once the committee has approved our dossier, we will get "verbal referral" (and we start packing!) and then it is sent on to the MOJ and once she/he signs it we get our "written referral" and the allowed dates for travelling to meet her.  The travel dates are usually a 3 week time period that start about 1 - 2 weeks from the time of getting the notice.

When we travel we will be in her country Monday - Friday.  So we will leave the weekend before and return home the next weekend.

Please pray that the timing of this trip will work nicely with preparing for and experiencing the marriage of our son - a first for us!

There's so much to do - prepare for the wedding (purchase clothes for family and make and purchse gifts etc), get appropriate suitcases, make packing lists, attend a bridal shower and all the while continue to run our home, run my home business and homeschool our children!  But by God's grace, I will accomplish all that He has for me to do each day!

It's official - Nothing Left to do but WAIT!

We recieved our I800a approval a week ago, we got it notarized that same day and mailed out to be apostilled.  I arrived back in today's mail and it was back in the mail today on it's way to our adoption agent, who will forward it to join the rest of our dossier in Priscilla' country!

Right now, all the government in her country is on a month long holiday, so nothing is happening there as far as adoptions go.  But it looks like our dossier will be all ready (translated and verified) to be submitted the day they open up again!

Praying for God's perfect timing for our trip, as we are also going to be having our son get married on October 12, and it's looking more and more like our trip to meet Priscilla might be in very close proximity to that glorious event!

But I know that God has this thing all dialed for our best and His glory!

So there won't be much news until September, so enjoy these last weeks of summer (while we start school next week!).

Thank you so much for your prayers and support!