Another miracle: The Ukrainian SDA will remain open for adoptions!

God is continuing to do miracles!!  We came home last week from our trip, prepared to wait for a few months to go get Vitya because it seemed that the Ukranian State Department of Adoption (SDA) was definitely going to shut down on July 11.  We were disappointed, yet knew we had to trust in God's perfect timing.

Yesterday, on July 11, however, we recieved an email from our facilitator saying that there was an 80% chance that the SDA was going to stay open, so we began praying and waiting to see what would happen.

Today we saw the official announcement from the State Department, that the SDA will stay open.  PTL!  He does hold the governments in His Hands!!

So what does this mean for us?
1.  We will not have to wait for three months for the agency to start making appointments again.
2.  Since the SDA already has our paperwork, we now just hae to wait until they contact our facilitator to give us a date for an appointment.
3.  We could go as early as the next three weeks, but we really don't know.

So....we are waiting, praying, and back in "get ready to go" mode again.  Thank you for your prayers!  We will let you know as soon as we have an appointment date.

Below is a copy of the State Department announcement:

Adoption Alert: Ukraine

Presidential order expected to allow SDA to continue processing adoptions in Ukraine

July 12, 2011

On July 8, 2011, the president of Ukraine signed an order which extends the State Department on Adoption’s (SDA’s) authority to process adoptions.  We have been informed by the SDA that the order will not take effect until the order is published, likely within a few days.  The SDA currently is not accepting adoption applications.  According to the order, the SDA will have the authority to continue processing adoptions until the Ministry of

Social policy is ready to take over as the new adoption authority in Ukraine.  The Ministry does not yet know when they will be prepared to take over adoption processing.

We will continue to ask the Ukrainian government to resume adoptions as quickly as possible.  We will also

continue to encourage the Ministry of Social Policy to protect adoptions where U.S. prospective adoptive parents have already been approved by the SDA to adopt a particular child.

According to the SDA, there are approximately 139 U.S. families registered with the SDA, some of them already in-country.  We will be following new developments closely to understand how they will affect the families

currently in process and will be posting relevant updates.  In that respect, we recommend that all American

families that are currently in Ukraine or have appointments with SDA during the next few weeks send their

contact information to the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine’s Adoption Unit at: kyivadoptions@state.gov.  Families should contact their local adoption service provider for further updates and details.

Updated information will be provided on www.adoption.state.gov as it becomes available.