A REFERRAL!!!!!

We just wanted to let everyone know that we got a call from our agency on Monday morning who informed us they had another referral for us.

It was actually quite amusing because Brandy and I were on our way to the doctor, in separate cars, to update our medicals for our paperwork, because they are expiring.

So there we were on a conference call, Brandy in her car, on her cell phone...me in my car, on my cell phone, getting the news.

We don't have many particulars yet. We do know it's a boy but we're waiting for more information from our agency. We don't know about travel yet either but we're hopeful for the first part of March.

Thank you to everyone who has been encouraging and offering prayer to us through this wild and crazy time. We truly appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts.

We'll keep y'all posted but just wanted to let you know it looks like we're on our way....again. :-)

Please keep praying for smooth sailing.

Love,
Brandy and Coby

What Can Be Done For Andrey?

First of all....thank you to everyone for all you support with Andrey and asking about him and wanting to help out with his situation. It is because of all of you that we continue to push and ask how we can help Andrey.

First wanted to let you all know that Andrey is the little boy that we met when we went to Russia on our first visit in October. Since our trip we have been told that he has developed AIDS and that he is Hepatitis B positive. Andrey is 19 months old today! His name means STRONG and HANDSOME and that he is!!

Because of his illness, we have been told by Russia that he is not adoptable and that is why we are awaiting another referral and another trip to Russia. BUT we have asked CHI how we can help and ALL of you have asked too....so here is where we are at this point.

We are trying to find out what hospital that he has been moved to. He is no longer at the orphanage that we meet him in because of his illness. Usually once a family turns down a referral, they are given no more information on that child. Well, because of his situation, Coby and I want to help. That was one of our first questions that we asked our agency after they gave us the news about his health....we want to help, we feel led to help we can't NOT help.

One of our Russian reps from our agency is going over to Russia this week to establish possible new regions and we are hoping that he will be able to get some answers to our questions about helping Andrey. We have sent him a list of questions and we are praying and hoping that he will be able to get direct answers to our questions and get them quickly.

Coby and I were hoping that this process of helping Andrey would of been faster. When we were given the news of his health, we thought time was of the essence. But it seams again that God's time is not our own. It looks like because this has never been done before, (turing a referal into a sponsorship) everyone is a little unsure of where to start. So at this point we ask for prayer. That is really what we need at this point. We have asked the questions, voiced our help, told them that you all are behind us and CHI is very welcoming of all of this....but if we are going to help in the right area...we need to make sure we are doing this correctly.

When Coby and I decided to adopt 2 years ago this past week we said that we wanted to help a child in need FIRST and add a child to our family. Who would of know that when we made that decision, God had Andrey in mind as the child to help. Little did we know that helping a child wouldn't involve bringing him home with us.

We will update you all when we have our answers and we would love as much help as possible for Andrey, the hospital he is at and other children with him suffering from the same illness. Coby and I are also hoping to help other families not have to go through what we have gone through. We don't know how that looks....but putting awareness out there about the second PCR test and making sure that the test is done BEFORE you even accept the child as a referral is also a way we want to help. We have also decided to post some pictures of our visit with Andrey so you all can see the sweet angel that we love.... and you all have loved through us!

Thanks for your prayers and thoughts and words. Let me encourage you all with the words of Isaiah the prophet:

Have you not known?

Have you not heard?

The everlasting God, the Lord,

The creator of the ends of the earth,

Neither faints nor is weary.

His understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the weak,

And to those who have no might He increases strength.

Even the youth shall faint and be weary,

And the young man shall utterly fall,

But those who wait on the LORDShall renew their strength;

They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary,

They shall walk and not faint.

Maybe Wednesday

Happy New Year to y'all. Hope you had a great holiday season. We just wanted to give a quick update to let you know what's going on with us.

The short of it is, we've been in talks with our agency the last few days and they think we could hear something a early as Wednesday. This will be the first day the country goes back to work after the Russian Orthodox holiday break.

So, they think we could hear something then. They've told us we're at the front of the line in our region so that's encouraging. They also mentioned us thinking about switching regions but we're not at that point and our rep in St. Louis wants us to hold off on that for a few days.

If we do get a call, they think it may be a month before we go because a lot will have to be done to combine two trips into one.

We're doing fine. Waiting as patiently as we can. Please keep us in your prayers.

Coby and Brandy