Background Information

How did we get to this point in the adoption process? I will try to keep this as brief as possible. Now that we are in the “waiting game” it is pretty amazing to reflect on everything we have done to get to this point.

In the fall of 2004 we began to research the internet and talked with people at our church about adoption agencies in Alabama. We quickly found an agency in Birmingham, Alabama (about 90 miles from us) that specializes in international adoptions. We attended an informational meeting and both Wendy and I left the meeting convinced that God was leading us to adopt from Russia. The next day we sent our application fee to Villa Hope International adoptions and our journey began in earnest.

The first steps in the process involved preparation for our home study. This is where a social worker comes over to your house and inspects your closets and wipes down your cabinets looking for dust. Well -- not really -- but it did require us to prepare information about every aspect of our lives. We had to write our autobiographies. Financial statements were required. Up to date physicals from our doctors were prepared. We were fingerprinted and our criminal records checked by the ABI (Alabama Bureau of Investigation), the FBI, and the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS).

Four people who have known us for a long time wrote letters of recommendations for us. We managed to find a good mix of Jason’s friends and Wendy’s friends who knew both of us. Coming from a West Coast/East Coast relationship that was hard to accomplish! The social worker said our friends wrote excellent letters and if you read her report about us you can easily pick out their statements.

We took classes on how to parent an adoptive child. In December 2004, we attended a seminar conducted by the University of Alabama in Birmingham International Adoption Clinic. It was an awesome seminar that taught us many interesting things about the health and development of children raised in an institutional environment. The clinic will do both pre-placement and post-placement examinations of our child.

In December 2004 we visited the UAB Travel Clinic for several vaccinations. I just love getting shots...Especially lots of them...NOT!

After getting BCIS approval in late 2004, in January of 2005 we had our home study. We passed! It was really no big deal and the social worker never checked out our closets or scanned for dust.

The next hurdle was completing our dossier. Or in layman’s terms, more paperwork frenzy. This was the set of documents that is sent to Russia, translated, and entered into the Russian system. This was a lot of the same type of information we had to prepare for the homestudy and included our social worker’s report. The difference was in the formality of the documentation. We had to prepare three clean copies with original signatures on all of them. Each set of documents had to have every individual document notarized, and then each notarization was sent to the notary’s state of issue to be apostilled. Once all this was completed our paper work was sent to Russia in March 2004.

Our most exciting news to date came on April 26, 2005. We learned that our paperwork had been sent to the region of Ivanovo. That means that is where our son lives! When we go to Russia, we will be visiting an orphanage in that region.

Following learning about our region came “the internet frenzy”. Any piece of information pertaining to orphanages in Ivanovo and travel to Ivanovo got Googled by the two of us. Multiple Yahoo! groups are relevant to our situation. The many resources on the internet has made the process somewhat easier to bear in that we can prepare ourselves for what is going to happen next. Thousands of people have done what we are doing and seeing their successful journeys to completion has been a blessing.

We learned Ivanovo is approximately 280 kilometers from Moscow. During the Soviet Era, Ivanovo was a major textile producing city. Most of the factory workers were women and Ivanovo was known as the City of Brides due to the 10:1 female to male ratio. There is a statue of Lenin in the center of the city. After our court date in Ivanovo I would like the first Lenentine family picture to be with Bad Vlad Lenin. Seems appropriate to me!

Some adoptive couples have taken car rides from Moscow to Ivanovo. Others have taken an overnight train. I’m hoping we take the train. When in Russia do as the Russians and I want to experience as much as I can. I may live to regret that statement, but for now that’s the attitude I am taking. At least we won’t have to fly any more once we arrive in country.

I have posted links to Ivanovo and the “Golden Ring” area of Russia. One site in particular had some cool pictures of flags and heraldry specific to the Ivanovo Region. Check them out!

Since April we have officially been playing the waiting game. The next step will be the phone call that says we have a referral, or in other words, a child has been matched to us. Our agency says we could get the call this month. We are prayerfully expecting that to happen. In some respects the paper work frenzy was a better period. We had something to do and stayed busy. Now we are just biding our time. As much as possible we are keeping our slates clean so that when the call comes we can get ready.

That should get you caught up some of the things that we've done to arrive at this point.