Feb. 13, 2013 We arrived in region this morning at 6:45am. Our facilitator and her husband picked us up and took us to our apartment. Luckily the person that I set up the apartment was there and took us to the grocery store. He showed us what was good and explained it all to us. We were then taken to run paper work around. After the paper work we were able to go to the orphanage. The orphanage was a very nice one. It has great medical care and care in general. Luckily our Jocie is very healthy and really hasn't needed any extra medical attention. When we saw her a lot of emotion ran through me and was overcome with joy. I couldn't believe that she was right here and I could hold her and touch her and kiss her. She is such a sweet little girl, very cuddly. She took to us and responded really well. We found out that her birth mother rejected her from birth. Never once visited. It makes me so sad that because of Down syndrome she missed out on this precious little girl, but I'm thankful at the same time because now she will be apart of our family. I have a feeling that she will be bringing a lot of joy into our home.

Feb 12, 2013 We had a great time today sight seeing. We also received our referral to go meet our little girl tomorrow. We go on an all night train to our region here in Ukraine. We get in tomorrow morning at 6:45. Can't wait to see her! This is a picture we got of her at our DAP appointment of when Jocie was younger! Ok, we are in Kiev Ukraine right now. We had our DAP appointment and was able to find out alittle more about our little one. Her real name is Sophia and was born to a single mother. Her birthdate is march 27th she will be 1. We have had a fun time meeting the other families. Always great to hear their stories. I will try to figure out how to upload a picture of our little one when she was a baby!

Our Story

I know many haven't heard why we are doing this or what encouraged us. So I will share our story with you. In September we got a flier on our door from a neighbors brother and sister-in law who were doing a fundraising garage sale. I got the flier and immediately put it away. About a week later, maybe 5 days ,my kids found it and wanted to show me a really cute little girl on the paper. I looked at it and saw a little girl with down syndrome on it. She was beautiful! Also on it was a website, Www.reecesrainbow.org, I was extremely intrigued that this family was adopting a sweet Down syndrome baby and wanted to find out more. So alittle background on me(aubray), My senior year of high school I became buddies with a girl with Down syndrome. We quickly formed a friendship and I looked at her as my best friend. She would call at all hours of the day and night. I learned from her about true friendship. I learned not to see those who may look different as that but to see them for who they truly are. Amazing gifts from god! I also grew up in a family were two of my siblings were adopted. Adoption was normal in my life, I new that it was giving a better life to those. I also new that I always wanted to adopt, I also would tell my mom while growing up that I would want a child with down syndrome. So with all of that being said I went to the website on the flier and instantly new why I was here. I felt that Heavenly Father put all these things in my life ultimately to make this decision to adopt. I looked at these amazing spirits but saw how many we're discarded, unwanted. Culturally they look at these children with differences and see that they can do nothing with there life. They aren't allowed in school, or to have a job. A lot of parents are told by doctors that it would be a better life for that child to go into an orphanage. We on the contrary have seen first hand how these children don't thrive in the orphanage, they aren't loved. Only in a family where the parents hold them, sing to them kiss them, that is how they can grow to be what god made them to be. It has been so hard for me to hear these children ages 1-4 cry for the entire time we are there only to have the door shut so it isn't as loud. To see little ones who are rail thin only skin and bones. To not be held, to be in there beds all day and night. If they are lucky they will go from bed to swing or bouncy chair. This is why we are here. We feel that god has put this into our lives to make us better, have amore fulfilling life. I know this little girl will bless our lives beyond measure. We will learn lessons in life we wouldn't have otherwise learned. We will feel pure love, and learn of Christ like attributes through her. Reece's Rainbow Adoption Ministry|Down Syndrome Adoption Ministry|Reece's Rainbow Adoption Ministry reecesrainbow.org

WE GOT OUR TRAVEL DATE!!!!

We have been waiting on pins and needles for our coveted email from Eastern Europe! We are going to have our DAP appt. Feb. 11, 2013. Yes that's alittle under 5 weeks away!! I am very excited but have never seen anyone have to wait that long before they travel. The average wait to travel after you recieve your dates is about 2 weeks. So from submitting it will be 10.5 weeks!! WOW, that's a long wait!! Don't get me wrong we are very excited but i don't like having to wait for things! I guess i need to learn patience!!! Until then we have alot of packing and learning the language. While we are in country we will be very limited on what we can say publically. So i will have a private facebook page if you would like to know more. A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED US GET TO THIS POINT!!! We have seriously had our prayers answered and been blessed beyond measure!! We are fully funded and feel honored to have recieved such blessings! A huge thank you to anyone and everyone who contributed, Austens work, 2 anonymous donors and many more generous people that can't be named now. I guess i can't complain anymore about the wait, the blessings outnumber the waiting! Keep you all updated on whats next!

Russian ban....

Over the past few weeks i've been following the ban on Americans adopting Russian children. It passed all the way with the president signing this morning, what a corrupt government!! Azlyn was asking why would people not allow children who don't have families to not be adopted from the U.S.!? All i could come up with was they were letting satan lead them, they weren't following Heavenly Father and Jesus. If they were this never would have come up! It's so interesting to listen to a child, everything is so black and white. Why couldn't this be more of what happens around the world. If people are hurting it's bad. Well, you may be wondering if this affects us being able to adopt our sweet little one. The answer is no, we were not adopting this little one from Russia. Luckily the country we are adopting from has no intention of following Russia on this Ban. My heart still goes out to those it is affecting and all of those children in orphanages and institutions. Every child is a child of god who deserves to be loved and have a family of their own!! We should be getting our travel dates VERY SOON!!!! We are just sitting on pins and needles waiting!! CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHEN IT WILL BE!!

GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!

This past week has been a very STRESSFUL week!! Last Tuesday i saw in the mail that our fingerprint paper was ready and that we just needed to go to USCIS to get them done. We walked in about 3 weeks early at 3:29 p.m. They close at 3:30 needless to say they said to come back tomorrow , which was Wednesday the day before thanksgiving. So we got there and got our fingerprints done!! YAY! That was a huge one, all we were now waiting on was the approval from USCIS that we were cleared and to get the next set of paperwork to send to country to get submitted! Well that day we heard nothing, the next day was Thanksgiving so we didn't hear anything that day either. Friday i kept calling Nancy, who is our go to lady for everything, to see if she had heard anything. Nothing!!!! UGH i was starting to get a little worried and frustrated, the dead line for submissions was the next Thursday the 29th!!! Monday came and i was feeling very anxious about everything. Were we going to get it in time to be able to make the winter cutoff?!!?!? Poor Nancy had to hear from me alot more then she probably wanted to!! I didn't hear anything until 4:15 p.m. the USCIS office closes at 5:00p.m. We had gotten approved but still needed to get the papers printed and notarized in order to be able to get them apostilled. Well by the time we got them notarized and printed it was 4:50p.m. There was no way to make it there in time! So i went the next morning at 7:30 am to get them apostilled and had to find a DHL place to send them to the country! We got it sent off and prayed and prayed that it would make it there by noon on Thursday! That was only 2 days away!! I got a text from Nancy this Morning saying that it arrived in country and they were at the notary and needed to be at the DAP in one hour in order to be able to get it submitted! ONE HOUR?!?! Are you kidding me?! Does the stress ever let up?!? More prayers were said and i got a text from Nancy again saying CALL ME!! I new this meant one of two things, either we got submitted or we would have to wait until after the winter shutdown! Well we GOT SUBMITTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT was 8:30 in the country and the team that we have there was just leaving the DAP, they had to get an exception to be able to submit a dossier after 6:00 p.m. THEY DID IT!!! I am so very grateful for the team that we have there! I have heard it said that if it were any other team it probably wouldn't have been able to get submitted! Heavenly Father heard our prayers and pleading!! We know that this is a miracle from him and now we won't have to wait a month and a half to be submitted. We will more then likely be traveling around then in mid Jan. Now we just wait to hear when our appointment in country is!!! I can't believe that we are here already!

UPDATE!!!!

Sorry i haven't written much lately! We just haven't had a ton to say! This week our homestudy was finished!!! That means that the last of our paperwork is done! We sent in everything to USCIS (where we get our fingerprints done) so we should hear from them in a few weeks. We are finishing up all the stuff with our homestudies, getting them Apostilled and then we should be sending them over to Eastern Europe this next week or so!! YAY!! We are getting closer!! After our USCIS date comes and we go get fingerprinted then we get to send that to the country, which is the very last document they need to submit our Dossier(paperwork to adopt internationally). That means we will be 5-7 weeks out from getting our date of travel!! Just gotta get through these last few documents and then we play the waiting game! Such a fun game to play ;) We are so excited to meet this little girl and have her be apart of our family!! The kids are constantly talking about having a little sister and they really can't wait! Sorry i have no pics but will be posting back when we hear from USCIS on our fingerprints! So close yet so far away it seems!