From the beginning until now

One year ago this month, I can't believe it, we started our journey. It all really began about 4 years ago when some friends from church adopted a little girl from Magadon Russia. From the day I heard their story and saw her pictures after they brought her home, I was hooked. I knew this was the way we would complete our family with a precious little girl. Now I had to pray about it, discuss it with Eddie, and figure out where to go from there.
Fast forward 3 years and we went to those same friends house to learn from them as much as we could and see if this was really something we wanted to do. When we left their home that night, Eddie looked at me and said, "Let's do it!" and that's all it took.
We began researching agencies and countries and we decided on Russia. We signed on with agency #1 in June and began the enormous amount of paperwork for our homestudy and social worker visit. It took about 3 months to get all of this together and in the meantime learned our agency had been suspended from working in Russia, so the search for a new agency began. In November we signed on with agency #2 and couldn't be more happy with them. It really was a blessing in disguess, but it put us back about 5 months. We had to redo paperwork, revise our homestudy and get everything sent to our new agency. We finished up our dossier (this is the stack of paperwork that goes to Russia) and got it to our agency in January. They compiled a few more things and had our dossier in Russia in February.
By the end of March our paperwork had been translated and registered in the Kaliningrad region of Russia. And now we begin the wait for a referral. A referral is a match the Russian officials make with our family and a child in that region available for international adoption.
We are very excited about being in the Kaliningrad region. It is a special place for us because of where it's located. It is actually the only region in Russia not attached to Russia. It is off on it's own bordered by Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea. In reading about this region, I also learned that it was occupied by Germany before WWII and many people still speak German there. We couldn't be searching for our daughter from a more perfect place. Eddie's ancestry is largely Polish and Lithuanian and I'm part German. How perfect!!
Like I said, now we begin the long wait for a referral. I know it will take a while, but as I've heard anyone that's ever done this say, the waiting is the worst. And boy are they right. We've only been registered for a month and I want "the call". But I know it's all in God's time, and goodness knows we have enough to keep us busy, like our two precious boys, while we wait. So the wait begins.....