The Decisions

For our first adoption, we decided to go with an International Adoption.  We had been praying and praying for the right answer and we just kept coming back to adoption from Russia.  When we were beginning our journey, the timeline for Russia was on average 1-2 years from start to returning home with your child.  So, after we signed our contract, we started to gather our mountains of paperwork they required.  We got most of it all together within a couple weeks, and sent it off  for translation and then onto Moscow.  We were so excited!  But then the brakes started to come on.  Things were not going smoothly in Russia with adoptions, and referrals were taking longer to make and trips were taking longer to take. We kept praying that ours would happen at the right time, even though it was very hard to wait.  About one year into the waiting, we found out that we had to do a blind referral.  This meant that they were not going to send any information to us prior to traveling on the first trip.  We didn't care, we just wanted to get over there and see the child that was meant for us!  About two months after that, I got the call that we got travel dates for March of that year!  Wow!  It was really happening now......