Chapter 7 - still waiting

We are still waiting to hear back from the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice about our match with "Luke". Last week, I checked in with our adoption agency and they said the MOJ received the paperwork and just needed some clarification on a few things. It's hard not to get nervous about that, but we are staying positive.

I spoke with our home study agency today and even though we are waiting to pay until we have the match, they are letting us get started on some stuff. It's encouraging to feel that they are on our side and helping us through this. We gave them non-family that will give us recommendations and they will send them out letters. The training required by the CO home study will be satisfied by our Gladney training and our Hague training, so more good news!

Chapter 6 - Language Learning

We are attempting to learn Bulgarian. We are starting small with greetings. Bulgaria uses the Cryllic alphabet, and we are not sure if we'll ever be able to read or write it, but we will try to learn to speak it using the phonetic words.

First, to say hello, you would say "zdrasti". If you were speaking to just one person you would say "zdravei". These are both informal. If you were speaking formally, you could use greetings depending on the time of day. Good morning = dobro utro. Good day = dobyr den. Good evening = dobyr vecher. We are mostly going to be learning the informal to speak with "Luke", but we may need some formal when we go to Bulgaria to meet him.

Zdravei, az se kaz vam Kate. Priyatno mi e da se zapoznaem. Hi, my name is Kate. It's nice to meet you. I can't wait to say these words to "Luke"!

When saying goodbye informally, you can say "do skoro", which means "see you later". You can also say ciao which is one of the words Bulgaria has adopted as their own. If you are speaking formally, "goodbye" is "dovijdane".

A little bit of Bulgarian at a time is easy for us so far. Hopefully we can retain and build our vocabulary of relevant words for being in Bulgaria and for speaking with "Luke". 

Chapter 5 - still waiting

We are still waiting to hear from the Ministry of Justice in Bulgaria if we are matched with "Luke" or not. We have decided to go with Nightlight Agency for our home study and have filled out the application and submitted it. We start the payments and the process after we hear about our match. It's tough to get the timing right on everything here. Once we find out we are a match, we have 6 months to get our home study, training, and dossier done and submitted for everything to be valid still. Plus we have to pay all of our fees and be ready to travel to Bulgaria to meet "Luke"!

It feel strange to be sitting around waiting for all this stuff to start. We have all the paperwork completed and ready to submit, but we can't go on any of it.

The craziest part is that "Luke" doesn't even know about us! He's just over there living his life and we already love him and think of him as our son. He won't know anything until we get the official referral from Bulgaria which won't be for another 4-6 months. When we meet him, after doing all the paperwork and preparations, he could decide he doesn't want to be with us. That is so scary and hard to think about.

Joe and Bella are as excited as ever about "Luke" joining our family. Hopefully we will hear soon about the match!

Chapter 4 March 1, 2015

The waiting is the hardest part.

There is so much to do and we can't do any of it yet.

We have to start our home study, but have questions about certain home study groups that we have to wait to have answered. There's a lot of hurry up and wait so far in the adoption process. We get a bunch of stuff to do, frantically finish, hand it in and wait... wait... wait...

Right now, we are waiting to hear back from the Bulgaria Ministry of Justice to see if they will match us with "Luke". If they give us the green light, we can start our home study. If they give us the green light, this blog goes live and fundraising begins! It's amazing the peace we all feel about this crazy ride we are on so far.

We have told some family members and close friends little by little what's going on. The support has been wonderful. Everyone wants to help us prayerfully, financially, or even by encouraging us in different ways. It's overwhelming.

We have training in a month in Fort Worth, which we are so excited about. It'll be great to have a lot of our questions answered and learn more about the process.