Notarized!

We drove over 90 minutes through the terrible traffic that is Philadelphia (in RUSH hour, on a Friday!) to meet for fifteen minutes with a notary who was available TODAY to notarize every remaining document we have for our dossier.  With our shiny new I 800 A approval in hand, we were ready!

We let Chelsea chew on a Dunkin Donut while we worked, and then we were headed toward home.  Fifteen little minutes, but fifteen important minutes!

Now, every document is notarized and ready to be apostilled.  We will hand carry our documents to Harrisburg on Monday to receive the authentications.  Everything from "out of state" is already apostilled.  This means that, by Monday afternoon, our completed dossier will be speeding its way to our agency - and then to Bulgaria!  It will not be too much longer before we receive approval for our first trip and finally get to meet the little boy we cannot wait to call our son.  By the end of this year, we pray, he will be with us and our family will have grown in a way we have prayed for for so long.

It's funny when I hear questions or criticism about adoption, as if it's some easy little process that magically gets a kid plopped in someone's lap.  That the people who do this are simply interested in collecting children to serve their own needs.  I can think of infinitely easier ways to expand a family.   Cheaper ways, too.  IVF doesn't cost as much as this adoption will.  Having a baby biologically wouldn't be near this expensive or complicated for most people.  If all I wanted was another child, by golly, I could think of far easier ways.

To date, every dime of adoption expenses have come out of our own pocket.  I can think of a hundred ways I could have spent that money.  Some would have been fun ways, others very practical ways, and some a combination of the two.  I know there are some in cyberspace who have had most of their adoption expenses donated to them.  That has not been us, and that is okay.  We have been blessed with assistance at just the perfect moments, and that is enough.  God promises to fulfill our needs when we ask (Matthew 7:7-11).  When we have most needed it, kind people have stepped forward.  Thank you.

We could have spent our money so many ways, and yet we were led, through the word of God, to pursue - not just adoption - but the adoption of a child with special needs from a terrible orphanage.  The Bad Place.  The Terrible Place.  The place where children are frequently starved, left in their own filth, and unloved.  Because our precious little Dude, our future son Joshua, lives in that place, his life will be more challenging than children who have lived in better places.  We know this, and we work to bring him home anyway.  We do this because God has laid it on our hearts to advocate for the least of His children.

It is so much more complicated than "wanting a son" or "wanting to have another child".  My goodness.  That hardly sums it up!

For today, we are one step closer to meeting the child we will proudly call our son.  The paperwork - the long road of paperwork - is ready to be sent away.  Now the work in Bulgaria begins.  Soon we will lay our anxious eyes on our child.

The gravity of that moment is beyond description.

Please help us get to that moment.  Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and support.  May you be blessed, even as God blesses us.