Dossier Approval and Benefit Concert!!

Our dossier was approved and submitted on June 10th. It was actually accepted on the first time! Which is unusual from what we hear? There were no mistakes with our paperwork! Thank goodness because I don't want to do anymore paperwork! ha. Anyways, they say we should know our travel date anywhere between 4-6 weeks from the time it was submitted. So we are looking at the end of July now for traveling the first time. (I know, every time I post the date keeps getting pushed back and back) We would like to think we are on the home stretch now with the waiting game. We are so anxious to get to Ukraine just to see V! Right now V is at a summer camp in Odessa Ukraine. He says he is not having any fun and is counting down the days until we come to him. He misses his family so much. We had bought him a cell phone before he left for camp so we could keep up the communication, but unfortunately it was already stolen. In the middle of the night under his pillow, might I add! UGH! This is cell phone #3 that has gotten stolen. I can't wait for the day where we don't have to worry about communication issues and I can lay my own eyes on my child every day! I'm sure it is a lot harder for him to wait than us, but we are hoping and praying for a speedy process from here on. We are still planning on traveling 3 times to Ukraine. Jerry will go all 3 times and I will only go 2 times. We will be gone approx. a week every trip. We are doing our last adoption fundraiser this next weekend. July 7th. Our friend, John Waller will be singing a concert in our backyard! Please help us spread the word! We will be selling the rest of our t-shirts and hoping to raise the additional money that is needed for us to complete this adoption. Follow John Waller music on Facebook! He is awesome! :) I will include some pictures of V and the picture of our fundraiser event. I feel like our child has grown and changed so much in the past (ALMOST 6 MONTHS!!) :((( We miss him!!!

God's Love for us

I have been thinking about God's love for us lately. That he is the ultimate Father of adoption, who adopted us. Without God's grace and love our adoption with V would not be possible. Jesus hears the orphans prayers and we have followed his calling. The love of a child through adoption is the greatest feeling! For a child who only spent 4 weeks of his life here with us is now our family. What a great God we serve! I am reminded by this just when V says "I love you mom!"

#waiting

I haven't updated in a while so I figured this was a good time! So many exciting things are happening as we are coming to the end of our paperwork. From the last time I posted, we have filed our Immigration paperwork with USCIS. That was 9 weeks ago!! We still have not gotten our approval, but should any day. It gets easier when you get assigned a case worker and have a "real" person that you can talk to instead of being someone's paperwork on someone's desk. We get updates from the case worker often. We have finished our Dossier paperwork, and as soon as we get the 171 approval from USCIS we can mail it to Ukraine. We are hoping within the next week or so. Starting next week, Ukraine will go on a 2 week vacation to celebrate Easter. All government offices close down. So we were told that our Dossier will be submitted to the government after May 13th. This will probably put our travel date in the middle of June for our 1st trip (SDA appointment) we are hoping. You never know because you are at the mercy of someone else's time with processing paperwork. There is nothing that we can do at this point but wait. Seems like this is the main theme for an adoption, waiting. Trying to remind ourselves that everything happens on God's timing and He knows best. We will get there, but the closer we get the slower time goes. We know we won't get to see V in May but June hopefully. Keep telling ourselves that we only have to go one more month without seeing him. The wi-fi has been out at their school for 3-4 weeks and we have been talking on the telephone and through VK. The past two weeks more of the telephone than anything. (EEEEEKKK) I'm going to have to work extra hours to pay for these international calls, but it's worth it. That 30-45 min of us talking makes him so happy!! (us too) You have to take the good with the bad. Some weeks we won’t speak to him for 7 days and then some weeks every day. So we talk as often as we can, when we can. He is practicing his English talking to us and he rather speak to us than type back in forth in Ukrainian on VK. He knows we will be coming soon, so he is having a hard time waiting. V keeps telling me what he wants to do when he is "home." He wants to play outside every day, eat good food, and spend every second with his new family. I asked him the other day about making friends in America and he said ok, but he rather spend time with his family. :) That makes me smile! We have decided that we might have to take two trips to Ukraine. If we did it in one trip, we would have to stay an awful long time. Two months. Well we can't do that because we both have jobs so we will have to break the trip up into two visits. Our first trip will be an appointment with the SDA (adoption agency in Ukraine)for them to approve us for adoption. Then we will get to go visit V at the orphanage and spend some time there with him. We are hoping he will not be gone away at camp for the summer. If the kids aren't on a hosting list they have to go to camp. We will then have to go to wherever he is to see him, if that is the case. We are hoping that they will let him stay at the school because we will already have a date assigned to visit by then. We will then be assigned to a court date. During that waiting period we will be returning home. It will probably be a 3 week span. We will go back to Ukraine for court and stay for another 2 weeks. The second trip can be the longest. After the court date the judge will make the child wait at the orphanage for 10 days before he can officially "come with us." They do this when the child has living parents in case they want to re-new their parental rights. That would not be the case with us, and have nothing to worry about. His dad is living but wants nothing to do with V. After the 10 long grueling days we can finally pick him up. We will then have to get new birth certificates, visa's, passports and we will have a meeting with the US embassy so he can be cleared to leave the country. All of that takes about 2-3 weeks so we will be hoping for the 2 week end and we can return home as soon as possible. We won't be taking Tripp or Hannah with us when we go. We will just be doing so much traveling in country; with the time change and the busyness of the trip we didn't think a 2 year old would enjoy it. It would be more torture than fun for him. For us too!!! Both times Tripp will be staying with grandparents, probably not realizing that Jerry and I are even gone. He loves them so. The region where V's school is, is about 8 hours away from the capital of Ukraine and we will be traveling back and forth doing a lot doing paperwork. Well, it seems as if our paperwork is almost done on our end... now it will be the hard part. Waiting. Waiting, Waiting, and more waiting. I will update when we get our approval from USCIS and our Dossier is accepted by Ukraine :) Keep praying that things go smoothing and in a timely manner for us! God is SO good ALL the time!! :) In the meantime we still need donations. We have a little bit of stuff left to pay for. All of the in-country travel can be expensive and we will both be out of work for a while. We still have 150 shirts left to sell! Please consider buying one to help out with the adoption. You can order one via PayPal here on the donation site: http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/bringing-vitalik-home-to-america-/39023 we can even ship them! They are $20 and come in sizes: S, M, L, XL and XXL. Just e-mail me your size and address if you need them shipped. kendallhudgins@yahoo.com Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts!! Blessings, Kendall, Jerry, V, Hannah, Tripp.

New Update

I realized that I haven't updated the blog in a month! Wow. Well not much has changed. We still miss him terribly. We are busy trying to finish paperwork and get things organized for our fundraisers. We are almost done with our home study. We just waiting to file our taxes and then we can submit all of our information to the immigrations office to be accepted to adopt internationally. At this point, best case scenario is we will be traveling at the end of May-1st of June. This is just for the first time. WHY DOES THAT SEEM LIKE AN ETERNITY TO ME?!? Probably because I have no patience and when my son is 6000 miles away and I can't see him or talk to him every day makes it worse. We are trusting in Jesus and knowing that his timing is everything. When I do get to speak to V he tells me that he misses us and is not happy. He wants to come home now to be with his family. This makes it 1000x's harder for me and my patience with this paper work. This past week we both had our physicals. It's crazy to me how they took 10 tubes of blood and tested us for every disease under the moon! All of the blood work was for Ukraine paperwork. I guess it's good in a way but they are so skeptical about Americans’ so they have to make sure!! One thing that I have found out for sure... ADOPTION... IS. NOT. FOR. THE. WEAK. It consumes my every thought, every day of the week. I will do anything to get him here faster, but that's just it...every day that's all my brain is thinking about. I'm constantly daydreaming of what it will be like when he is here with us and we don't have to worry anymore. How much fun are we going to have when he is finally here forever! My brain is also functioning 7 hours ahead. Wondering how is doing in school and if he is ok. He tells me he doesn't like the food at his school and he doesn't sleep well. This past week he told me he was sick too. As a mother... all these things are always running around in my head. Is he hungry? Is he sad? Is he ok? This is still a very humbling experience. That we, as Americans, take so many things for granted. I just want him to have the best 24/7 because that is what he deserves. I am very thankful that I only work 3 days a week. If I did not have Thursday-Sunday to get stuff done it would probably take more than a year to do this!!! I am also very thankful that the doors of God's will are still opening left and right. Our prayers are being answered one by one. It's amazing!!! God is so good all the time! On another note I went to the doctor this past week about my throat. I have been having problems swallowing lately (actually for about 2 months) but I finally went to the ENT about it. They numbed my nose and throat and stuck that "light tube" down my nose to look around. Well I have a cyst at the base of my tongue/left side of my throat. He said it was an enlarged salivary gland. They put me on antibiotics for a month to see if it will go down. If not, I will have to have surgery to have it cut off! The first thing that came to my mind is, “I don't have time for surgery!!" So please pray that the medicine will work and I won't have to go through all of that. I literally don't have time for that. haha. Our fundraisers are going well. Please help spread the work for our Golf Tournament that is March 9th at 10 am at Orchard Hills golf course in Newnan. This is our main fundraiser for the adoption and we are hoping and praying that our fees are raised! God willing! We are thankful for all the continued support we are having. It's really amazing how the community, friends, family and strangers come together for a good cause. We are still praying that everything goes smoothly for the paperwork... we have an older child that is waiting to come to America! Until next time. Much Love.

Missing him!

This week has been up and down with emotions: for me at least. I guess the mom in me has gotten the best of me. Isn't that what women do anyway? Worry? Well this whole adoption process will be full of ups and downs. It seems like one minute we will be so excited and the next not so much because of something that is out of our control. We will always be ecstatic that we are adopting V, it's just the technically stuff that gets in the way. We have begun our home study and will have our home visit done next week. This is where the agent will inspect every inch of our home. It is also about digging in your WHOLE entire life; past, present and future. We even have to get blood drawn! haha. FUN! Once our home study is approved we will file Immigration paper work with the US. Then we file paperwork with the government of Ukraine. After all that is complete we will get our invitation to travel to the Ukraine. The social worker and government will interview Jerry and I for adoption approval. It seems like our SDA appointment is so far away, but I'm determined to see V sooner than later so I'm doing all possible to get fundraising and paperwork underway. Not to mention all of the above is what costs thousands of dollars. We are continuing to take this leap of faith and trust that the Lord will provide. We have had many instances this week where doors have opened and we are continuing to follow God's lead. We have had some negativity towards our family about this whole adoption. We will just continue to put on our armor of God. I like this verse. "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord." Isaiah 54:17. I also understand if it IS GOD's will, it WILL happen. When you go into adoption you have to go into it with that in mind, and be pro-active at the same time. No one has $20,000 sitting around to commit to. We are also doing God's work, which in the bible it states to take care of Orphans and Widows. What we are doing is certainly not negative, it is a blessing. To take in a child that has no future or family is God's greatest blessing to our family to say the least. We have talked to V two times this week. Tuesday on "FaceTime" and today I spoke with him on VK; which is the Facebook in Europe. Of course all of our talking was in Ukrainian and I'm thankful for my itranslate app on my phone. All I have to do is copy and paste. He told me twice in our conversation that he wants Jerry and I to come get him and take him home "forever." I told him that I'm so happy that he chose to come live with us forever and he said, “me too" "only a little bit longer to be sad." Wow. This is where my motherly instincts kick in and I want to get on the next flight to Ukraine. I want to save him and bring him here where I know he is safe and happy. No government laws, no rules and no court dates. I could only wish. We are so happy for the support that we have been given. I have connected with other 'host' moms that are now in the process of adoption. They have been my glue this week. They are the only ones that truly understand all of this! We can share all of our struggles and such. We might be crazy, but this is what GOD has called us to do. We aren't doing it for us; we are doing it for Vitalik who needs the life he deserves. He hasn't had half the life I have and I plan on spending the rest of my (our) life making it up to him. A mom and dad, is just that. Someone that will NEVER not be there for you, unlike his past. Anyways, another good note! My sweet neighbor gave us an Ipod touch 4th generation today! I am syncing things to it right now and I can't wait to send it to him next week. Our other neighbors, John and Josee Waller, received their court date in Ukraine today and will be traveling to the Ukraine next week! So excited for them!! I can't wait to be where they are in this process. They will be taking V's ipod to Ukraine and mailing it to an "outside" chaperone. Who will then hand deliver it to V. The thing is in Ukraine, if I was to mail it to him 1) Customs would take it or 2) his school would take it. They examine every package that comes in. It would most likely never make it to him. We will be sneaking this in the "back door" as you could say. haha. Thank goodness for hook ups. This will make our communication with him 100,000 times better. He will have this to FaceTime and to text us every day, anytime of the day he wants! No more waiting a couple of days to pass by! yay! I just hope it makes it! :/ I've done enough ranting on. I just wanted to update everyone. Thanks for all your support. We appreciate it a million x's. Love to you all!! Kendall and Jerry

Donation website!

Please visit this website for dontations! http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/Bringing-Vitalik-home-to-America-/39023

24 hours

Well yesterday Vitalik left to go back to Ukraine. He has been gone from our family for 24 hours. We are all super sad around here. Yesterday was one of the worst days I have ever experienced. We were emotionally and physically drained when we went to bed last night. We went to bed one child missing and woke up this morning with one child missing. As I was fixing waffles this morning for Hannah and Tripp I felt myself tear up because I wasn't fixing 7 waffles (V always ate 4!!) :( The process can't go by fast enough so we can go to Ukraine for our adoption appointment. I'm praying God helps us raise the money quickly and that we will have patience through this process. When you a love a child and then they have to go away it's the hardest thing ever! BUT I do realize that this short time will be nothing compared to when he can move here forever. V reminded us of that when he said, " ME school mini-time and American BIG time" haha. We have already talked to him a couple times since he left. He called 2 times yesterday. His phone no longer will work overseas but we got a FaceTime from him this morning when we first got up! One of his good friends got an Ipod touch for Christmas and he borrowed it just to FaceTime us. (They were in the airport with wi-fi) I can really tell he misses us. When he gets to check his VK account (European facebook) he will REALLY realize we miss him. We have sent him several messages in the past 24 hours. We have to be able to communicate with him every second we can, so I hope he can get his phone working with a Ukraine SIM card. If not we will ship an IPOD touch to him so he can FaceTime us. He is only allowed to get on the computer a certain amount of time at school. Sometimes only 2-3 times a week; that is not OK with this mama. He doesn’t have wi-fi at his school but he told me there is a restaurant next to his school that has wi-fi that they link up too. Funny how technology is worldwide! His orphanage is in the middle of a big city so he has access to wi-fi other places that are close by. I hope he is ok, because it will take a while for us to be. I keep reminding myself that this is in God's hands and it WILL happen. I'm going to paste the link to make donations here. We have only raised $200 dollars. We have a long way to go! We will be selling shirts, having cookouts and a golf tournament soon! Thanks for the prayers and support!!! We appreciate it! Love, Kendall and Jerry http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/Bringing-Vitalik-home-to-America-/39023