Our Homestudy is finally over!! We have the final copy in our hot little hands and are preparing to meet with our adoption agency on Tuesday.

For those of you who don't know, our adoption practitioner has met with us four times over December and January, and asked us about everything in our lives from how we met, to how we were raised, to our life's goals, to our relationships with others, to how we plan on raising our children, etc, etc, etc. We had to get police and child welfare checks from every place we've lived in since we were 18 (stupid us for moving so much!), references from our friends and family, medical checks, and more. We even had to attend a training course on how to raise children. Of course, none of this was for free either. I feel like we've let the whole world into our lives to decide if we should have kids or not. It can definately be overwhelming at times, and I'm trying not to let my frustration come out in bitterness or anger. Those who work, live or spend any length of time with me, will know that it usually comes out in tears anyways!

Today in church, one of the little girls told me that she prays for Mark and I to have a baby every night. It reminded me that no matter what hoops we have to jump through, we're going to come to the end we're hoping for.

"I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out-plans to take care of
you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I'll listen."

We're blessed to have people who care about us. We're blessed to serve a God who cares deeply about what happens to us, who knows everything we desire, and who has the power to make these desires a reality.

We are meeting with the agency on Tuesday. She's the one who will send all of our documentation to the government, eventually present us with a potential child and help us to plan our trip to Russia. We know people who have adopted through this agency and have had a good experience. I am excited to meet with her and get the next stage of this process moving. They say that after everything is done on the Canadian side (our approval, etc), it should take somewhere between 3 and 12 months to get a proposal for a child. In my head, I'm thinking next summer (2010), but I really have no idea of when things will really happen for us.