Waiting, hoping and praying

We received our official final homestudy report on Monday, April 9 and submitted our i600a (the "Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition") on Thursday, April 12!!!!  It was a very exciting day to get that form on its way as it is a LONG part of this process!  Somewhere I remember seeing we could expect it to take 11 weeks...not sure where....but friends got theirs back in only SIX- so praying for that!  We can't submit our paperwork to Ukraine until  that comes back, so the sooner the better. 
OK, I love what friends have done to protect the privacy of their kids by using only their first initial....so our Ukrainian son will be V now!:)  Our bio kids are A1, J and A2.  Thanks for the idea, P!!:)

We then Skyped with V again on Saturday, the 14th and it was AWESOME!  He has learned a lot of English since we skyped last- we were so proud of him!  One of my favorite things he said was, "One moment" as he lifted one little finger when he would have to leave the camera to go get something he wanted to show us.  We showed him our Easter eggs so he ran to get his eggs to show us.  They were ornate and incredible.  Our colorful yet plain American Easter eggs hung their heads in shame:)  I asked him if he would teach us how to do that and he said, "Yes"  So NEXT Easter, expect to see some amazing eggs coming from here!  We found out that Ukraine actually celebrated Easter a week behind us, on Sunday April 15.    He sang a sweet song for us in Ukrainian and then we decided to sing for him!  We sang, "How Great is Our God", since we had just seen this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBYTg2Efaek&feature=youtube_gdata_player  And then V SANG WITH US!  In English!!!  Wow, how did he know that?  It was so precious. As we were singing, we could see his mouth moving.  I thought he must know the song in Russian or Ukrainian, but when we stopped, he kept going and sang another verse by himself, in English.  Wanted to jump through the computer and hug him!  He also typed to us...some cute and/or funny symbols and then some sweet words: including "You are my family" to which J replied, "You are our brother" and he replied, "You are my sisters and brother."   It was amazing and makes it even harder to WAIT so long to go get him.  Wish we could hop on a plane NOW! 

We are now gearing up for our Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser on Saturday, April 21!  I put an ad in the local paper, so hopefully we'll have a good turnout!  Please pray for us as this our first real fundraiser!  We are hoping to make it closer to our goal.  We now have raised $8,720 toward our $30,000 goal, thanks to all of our amazingly generous donors!  Words cannot express our gratitude for helping to unite us with our second son.  Although we were hoping to be closer to our goal at this point, God has met every need thus far, so we continue to trust in His provision.  

Thanks so much to everyone who is reading this, supporting us and praying for us!  You are such a blessing!