Go get her!

The ding of my cell phone reporting a received email was heard only by Josiah. He told me that my phone made a noise.... There was no way to know how important that ding was! I continued to unload the dishwasher. 

The night before our facilitator had told us that he thought our date would be in the first week of December, but since he didn't have a specific date yet, I didn't allow myself to get over excited..... 

When I finally opened my email and saw the email was from our facilitator. I first thought that it must be In Relation to a question I had sent the night before. I completely overlooked the subject of the email. 

When I opened it I saw these words

"Dec 4 is our appointment date!

Congratulations!!!!!!!!"

My heart jumped! I screamed! Finally! We will go get our girl!

I called Ronnie, he had not yet seen the email. So I got to tell him. 

By this time, Josiah and Lydia had come running, wondering why I was squealing and jumping around! I told them that we are going to get Lena soon! Josiah, wearing only his diaper at the time, turns around, gathered his milk cup and snack in his arms, and said, while walking towards the door "should we take Lena some milk and snack too?" He was ready to go get his sister!! We spent a good bit of time yesterday jumping in circles in the living room! 

I am now panicking about getting everything ready in time, but I also work best in a time crunch. So, I guess I got that. We will be having a Ukrainian Christmas this year and I could not be more excited! 

Our next steps are like this:: 

- travel to Ukraine!! Then there will be generically a 3-step process. 

Disclaimer::: This is the simplified, and error free  version of what should happen. We first meet with the SDA. This is kind of like our DHR, or child services. They will give us a referral and file on Lena. We will then go to Lena's orphanage and manage some paperwork while we wait for step 2 - our court date. That is where the judge will declare (prayerfully) that she is legally ours! (This will be 2-3 weeks after the SDA appointment). 

Once we have the court decree, there will be a 10-day wait and then It will be finalized! We can then bust her out and start step 3.... the process of getting her US documents in order. Once we have those (passport, birth certificate, medical records, etc.) we will fly home! 

We expect this, if smooth, to take approximately 6-8 weeks! 

Our prayer requests are mainly that holidays don't make too much of a mess, that Josiah and Lydia manage the travel as well as we think they will, and that our remaining funds will come in:) 

Our God has brought us so far in such a short time. We could not ask for more! 

Lena, hold on, we are coming soon!