Bulgaria or Bust

Since this IS a private blog I got permission from our in-country facilitator (or whatever her official title is) to post a picture and the name of our country. So let me introduce you all to "Stephanie" from the country of Bulgaria. She is 8 1/2. Isn't she just precious! I am trying really hard to envision her here in our living room but right now she seems a bit unreal.

As you can see from the quotation marks around her name, "Stephanie" is not her real name (though it is kind of an Americanized version of it.) And what will we be naming her??? Well, I have a couple ideas but we haven't decided yet. Honestly haven't discussed it yet. As those who followed our last two journeys know, we are notorious for making final decisions on names the night or morning before actually meeting our child. Those people who figure it out right away amaze me. Though I go by "Joy" my full name is Anna Joylean. My mom is Joyce Ann. My maternal grandmother was Anna. My daughters are Teresa Joy and Scheri Lynn with the middle names coming from my middle name. I would really like Ann, Anna, Anne, Anya--etc. to be part of Stephanie's name. We'll see.

I've been wanting to share my Bulgaria story. As some of you know, back in January Kevin and I had felt led of the Lord to cautiously proceed with the adoption of a little girl from another country but on January 27 Kevin lost his job. Those adoption plans came to a screeching halt (thankfully another Reece's Rainbow mommy came forward and is in the process of adopting that little one) yet I could not get away from the idea of adoption. On January 31 our pastor came to Acts 16 in the course of his sermon series. This is the story where Paul is on one of his missionary journeys, knows he is called to preach the gospel but when he thought to turn one direction and go into the province of Asia, the Holy Spirit blocked him. When Paul and party tried to turn the other direction and enter Bithynia, the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them. So they just headed straight for Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." Paul and his crew determined God wanted them in Macedonia and headed there by ship to share Jesus. Well this story reminded me of our adoption journey. We thought God wanted us to adopt so we decided to try to bring home two little girls. We found out one wasn't available for adoption so we thought to adopt just the other one. Then the door slammed shut. I'd been wondering about Bulgaria--especially since the in-country travel time is so much shorter than with Ukraine which could be especially important if Kevin had a new job. So I got on the internet in the next two or three days (early in February), went to the RR site, looked at some Bulgarian kids listed there, looked at the Bulgaria program site, pushed the highlighted "Bulgaria" link and was taken to a history page. I found out that Bulgaria used to be part of Macedonia!!! (Though not at Paul's time) I was so intrigued I spent several hours studying the country of Bulgaria.

Adoption stuff done today: printed off the I-800A form, directions, and tips--that's a PILE of paper. Printed off a passport renewal form for Kevin AND found his current passport. Tried to go to the Health and Welfare site and schedule fingerprints for background check for home study but the site will only use Internet Explorer and we use a different browser. Filled out 2 pages of application for our home study agency--the EASY pages that just ask for name, address, DOB, education, job, income, kids' names and birth dates, dog's name, number of toes on your cat's left hind foot, language spoken at home by your parrot, etc. Now I just have the short answer questions that ask about motivation to adopt--these always take me way too long to write. I am rarely satisfied with the 3-5 word response but must expand and expound. Except the question that asks "Who initiated this adoption?" I really can't think of any profound, drawn-out way to say "ME"

Getting tired and silly obviously. Must go to bed.