Why, Oh Why, WHY Ukraine!!??

I want to take a minute and tell you about how we decided to adopt from Ukraine. I suppose I should also answer, why did we even decide to adopt?

Nancy and I have been married since 1990. I was 28, she was 34. I don't know if we ever really said, we want x children, we just kind of let things happen naturally. In 1994, our son Mark was born. Now, almost 14 years have gone by and we have no other children.

A few years back, Nancy and I attended an adoption seminar, or orientation, or whatever you call it, at Lutheran Social Services in Sioux Falls. But afterwards, neither of us felt a burning passion to go with their program. We just let it go.

Then, last year, our niece Sabrina and her husband went on a mission trip to Chile, where they did construction work on an orphanage. She sent us some info on a little boy that they wanted to see get adopted. When Mark saw that, he was all for it. He has always wanted siblings.

But about that same time, we learned that another family in our city, the Tolly's, had gone over to Ukraine to adopt two girls. That got us interested in Ukrainian adoptions. The Tolly's have become our friends and an invaluable resource as we pursue our own Ukrainian adoptions. Take a look at their adoption blog if you're interested.

Now, the unfortunate part. Ukraine is a relatively new country. Until the 1990's, it was part of the Soviet Union. They sometimes halt adoptions as they change the adoption procedures or whatever. We appear to be in one of these times. Our facilitator, Oleg, has told us that the government is not allowing adoptions right now. Dr. David has a great post on the situation. So we can only wait, and hope that some day, some way, things will change. The real bummer is that if we have to wait too long, the documents in our dossier will expire and we will have to start over. Pray with us for a miracle that the situation will improve. Not for us, really, but for the kids caught in the middle who desperately would like a family.