And…we FINALLY have a Court Date!

October 12th we will be in court in Volgograd! It is such a relief to finally have this date, you have no idea. It will be 5 months after meeting Elijah for the first time, much longer than we anticipated, but it’s a court date none the less!! Yesterday was a nerve-racking day because we never heard anything about how the preliminary hearing went or if we had a court date…nothing. Thankfully we heard early this morning though, so it was only 24 hours of being on the edge of our seat watching and waiting for that phone to ring. :) (During that 24 hour period we may have engaged in some retail therapy…)

We are now in the midst of booking our flights, then hotels, then working on the next round of paperwork to complete and bring with us. The judge isn’t requiring that we update our medicals in the US, so yay to that! We do have to complete the new requirement of 80 hours of training before court. (I am honestly glad that Russia is now requiring adoptive families to go through that much training. We see so many families at work that have no clue what they may face in the future while parenting a child who has experienced neglect and trauma. I think the training is a great requirement.) Sad that I can’t train myself since I train on adoptive issues for a living :), but Beacon House has schedule a “boot camp” next week in Pensacola, Florida to cover most of this training requirement, so we might as well have a little retreat at the beach and pass the time between now and court. :)

Back to travel mania! Thanks for the prayers, please keep them coming, court should be interesting… :)

Preliminary Hearing is Tomorrow!!

Our preliminary hearing is tomorrow (well, technically in the middle of the night tonight since there is a 9 hour time difference...11pm here is 8am there)! Yippee! Please join us in praying that the judge and everyone involved will have had a good nights rest, that the judge will want to expedite getting Elijah home and will issue us a fast court date, that Lena (our rep) will represent us well and advocate for us...there are several possible holdups due to recent changes in Russian regulations but we are praying that our process will not be slowed down as a result. We went ahead and requested our visas last week so we are ready to travel ASAP! Pray, pray, pray!!!

Quilt Winners!

We have our winners for the adoption fundraiser!! The winning bid on the Auburn quilt goes to...Rachel Dykes for $80!! The winning bid on the Bama quilt goes to...an anonymous bidder for $105!! That's $185 for Elijah's orphanage...that will buy a lot of diapers, clothes and other necessities. That's awesome! Thank you to everyone who bid and especially to our winners. :) Congratulations!

(If you are the anonymous bidder, please contact me at lhwilliams812@gmail.com or leave a comment below with your email address so that we can work out the details. Thanks!)

Preliminary Court Hearing

Our preliminary court hearing is finally set. Unfortunately it is not until the 19th, a very long time after our documents were submitted to Russia. We should find out our court date on that day. From the two families that I know of that have completed the process/are ahead of us in the process in the Volgograd Region, the court date was approximately 2 weeks after the preliminary hearing. We are hoping that this will be the case for us as well. Our medicals expire the beginning of October (they are only good for 90 days) and I cannot explain to you how much I do not want to have to redo all of that…blood work, chest x-rays, TB skin test, letter from the doctor’s office, copies of the doctor’s license, form to fill out…sigh. We are just going to wait and see what the judge has to say after the preliminary hearing and hope that we don’t have to redo all of it. Ideally we want our court date before they expire, if not that, then maybe the judge will at least let it slide by a few days.

It’s just frustrating because things continue to go so slowly! We had been told by our facilitator in Moscow that he could see us being back for our second trip by the end of July, which would put Elijah home by now. And now it’s (optimistically) looking like our court hearing won’t be until the beginning of October, which puts us bringing him home in November. Like I keep saying, my concern does not lie with me waiting, it lies with Elijah waiting.

I wish I could be more excited about getting this date and getting one more step in the right direction, but I’m just not. I don’t really know how to pray anymore to be honest. We prayed that we would be back for court the end of July, that date came and went. Then we prayed our court documents would be submitted quickly and then that didn’t happen. We prayed that we would get a preliminary hearing soon after submitting documents to court and then that didn’t happen.

The Lord wants us to bring our requests to Him, He wants us to pray and believe, but it’s REALLY hard to when you have prayed for so many things that haven’t happened. Please don’t get me wrong, I know that God’s in control and I know that His plan is perfect, but it’s really hard to pray specifically for things when those prayers haven’t been answered in the past. I know that the Lord is capable of miracles, I just have a hard time seeing how my prayers have an impact on that…

I know God sees the bigger picture and I just have to trust in that. But my heart keeps getting crushed each time I GENUINELY believe He will answer our prayers in the way we are praying because they appear to be in our child’s best interest and then He doesn’t.

Looking back on our miscarriage experience…we prayed and believed with our whole hearts that the Lord would give our baby a heartbeat again. We truly believed that He would receive so much glory through that miracle. That didn’t happen. Right afterwards we were so confused about why He would allow that, but looking back I SEE. Without us losing our baby girl, Elijah wouldn’t have a mommy and a daddy and we wouldn’t have the honor of being his mommy and daddy! God is receiving so much glory through this process and our baby girl is better off with Jesus! I can truly SEE now why God didn’t answer our prayers in the way we prayed. He had a much bigger plan than we could ever imagine…and I would never want to change any bit of it.

I just have to trust that He sees something we don’t see now too. That He does have a plan in all of this and is protecting our baby boy through it all. So I will believe that He sees the whole picture. I will believe that He continues to hold Elijah in His hands. I will believe that He is bigger than all of this timing. I will believe that He is bigger than paperwork. I will believe that He hears every single one of our prayers. I will believe that He is sovereign.

My prayer… Lord…"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" Mark 9:24

Orphanage Donation

I didn’t mention yesterday what the money from the quilts will be designated for. Part of our adoption expenses is the opportunity to donate to Elijah’s orphanage. The orphanage is in need of clothes, diapers, winter clothes, etc. and we are going to be bringing a monetary donation as well as many items with us on our next trip. SO the proceeds from the quilts will be given to Elijah’s orphanage to help out all of the other children that still do not have forever families. Does that give you motivation to bid? :)

Click here to bid on the Alabama Quilt.

Click here to bid on the Auburn Quilt.

Adoption Fundraiser – Alabama Quilt

My sweet coworker and friend, Esther, has donated two beautiful quilts to be auctioned for an adoption fundraiser! (For those of you that don’t know us, we are in the process of adopting an adorable 18 month old little boy named Elijah from Russia. I hope you have a chance to follow us on our journey!) There is an Alabama quilt and an Auburn quilt for auction. These quilts each take her between 8-12 hours to make (they are hand stitched!) and they are extremely soft!

Here’s how we are going to do it. If you are interested in bidding on the quilt, please leave a comment in the comments section below with your bid and email address. There will be two separate posts, one for the Alabama quilt and one for the Auburn. We are going to start bidding at $40 and please increase your bid by at least $5 each time. (Depending on your location I will either hand deliver it or ship it to you.) The bidding will end Saturday, September 8 at 11:59pm. Remember to keep checking back to increase your bid as needed. Thanks in advance!! Now…GO!

Alabama quilt is approximately 3.5 x 4.5 feet

Click here to bid on the Auburn Quilt.

Adoption Fundraiser – Auburn Quilt

My sweet coworker and friend, Esther, has donated two beautiful quilts to be auctioned for an adoption fundraiser! (For those of you that don’t know us, we are in the process of adopting an adorable 18 month old little boy named Elijah from Russia. I hope you have a chance to follow us on our journey!) There is an Alabama quilt and an Auburn quilt for auction. These quilts each take her between 8-12 hours to make (they are hand stitched!) and they are extremely soft!

Here’s how we are going to do it. If you are interested in bidding on the quilt, please leave a comment in the comments section below with your bid and email address. There will be two separate posts, one for the Alabama quilt and one for the Auburn. We are going to start bidding at $40 and please increase your bid by at least $5 each time. (Depending on your location I will either hand deliver it or ship it to you.) The bidding will end Saturday, September 8 at 11:59pm. Remember to keep checking back to increase your bid as needed. Thanks in advance!! Now…GO!

Auburn quilt is approximately 3.5 x 3.5 feet.

Click here to bid on the Alabama quilt.