First Entry - U.S. Requirements Complete

We are convinced that God has chosen some children to be in our family and that he is now leading us through the decisions and activities that will bring those specific precious ones to us. We don't know who they are yet, or even how many they are. They are our hidden treasures.

Our adoption adventure started to become a reality in December, when we selected a country (Ukraine) and an agency (Adopt Abroad, which specializes in helping Americans resident overseas to adopt) after careful research. We took advantage of our time in the States around Christmastime to take care of some paperwork, and we had our social worker visit us to do a home study less than a week after returning home to Morocco.

The process has three phases: get U.S. permission to adopt, get Ukrainian permission to adopt, then take a trip to Ukraine to meet children and leave the country as a family if all goes well. In the last week, our roller coaster ride has kicked into high gear. We've been busily checking off requirements for the U.S. application until some news from our agency changed our focus. The central Ukrainian office may stop accepting new dossiers soon, so we are now doing everything possible to submit our application; this is the harder one, because all documents need an international legalization to be valid in Ukraine.

Thanks to some last minute scrambling by Mom to add the last document to the folder and by Amy to hustle them through the State Department in Indianapolis, our American documents are legalized and on their way to Ukraine already. Yesterday, we set the wheels in motion for our Moroccan documents to be authenticated for the Ukrainian dossier and we'll see how that progresses this week. This is what they looked like when we got back from the signing office. We legalized 44 signatures and 11 copies.

Today we finished our last requirement for the U.S. application, and it seemed like a good time to get this record of our adventure started. We completed the third of three online classes, and with the stack of documents that we sent off a week ago, the agency should have everything they need to submit their home study and request permission for U.S. immigration. Each of us will post separately from now as we try to give you (and us!) a chance to relive the experience of finding our hidden treasures.

Stan and Julie