Two steps forward.....

And one step back, that's what it feels like at the moment anyway! After being promised photos and more medical information by Mon/Tue of this week we have just found out that the coordinator who works in the Almaty region has been called away on a 'family emergency' for a week. It's frustrating but something which has become all too familiar over the last few years!

The latest news is that our agency will receive the updated info on Mon of next week, Mon just happens to be the Labour Day holiday in America (typical) so we should get the information by Tuesday lunchtime. We already have a meeting set up with our paediatrician on Tue/Wed of next week so it should be in time for that.

Our revised timetable is as follows -

Confirm acceptance of the child after our paediatrician meeting next week.

Apply for letter of invitation which should arrive 20th Sept.

Sort visa and book flights and be in Almaty last week in September.

Pray that our paediatrician will be happy with the latest medical and photos and will give us permission to travel.

Pray that the paperwork will travel quickly.

To keep you all going here is a pic of some kids from an Kazakhstan orphanage :)

Philip & Amanda

Getting there...

OK, we seem to be getting somewhere, we are almost matched with a little girl in Almaty. Our agency have said that in all the years they have been organising inter-country adoption they have never seen a child this young being made available for adoption before, (we like it when they say things like this as it helps to remind us who is REALLY in control of our situation)!!

She is not quite 4 months old and very very tiny, she was born 5 weeks premature and is still only 8 lbs. However she is gaining weight and growing in all categories and her brief medical states that she is healthy and developing well.

Our next step is a photo and a little more info from Kazakhstan on Tuesday then a meeting with our health trust paediatrician later on that week, if everyone is happy we will get permission to travel and three weeks later we should be in Kazakhstan, woohoo !!!

Pray that the info from Kazakhstan which we receive on Tuesday will be good.
Pray that the meeting with our paediatrician will go well and we will be approved to travel.
Pray that our letter of invitation from Almaty will arrive quickly.
Pray that our little girl will continue to grow and thrive.

I will post an update next week as soon as we have met our health trust.

Philip & Amanda

Still waiting....

They say 'no news is good news', they were wrong!!!!!

We find ourselves in a strange limbo like state between possibly, maybe, probably being matched with a child but having absolutely no information or confirmation that this is the case. We were speaking with our agency this evening and they have told us not to worry as it is quite normal for the coordinators in Kazakhstan to promise information by a certain date then hear nothing for a week!

We leave these things with the Lord and trust that we will get some good news and more information this week, thank you all for continuing to pray for us, we really appreciate it!

Hopefully in our next post we will have something more positive to report.

Philip & Amanda

Bumps in the road

The only sure thing about international adoption is that it's unsure, we experienced that again tonight as we found out that the child which we had been matched with in Arkalyk is no longer available, it seems that once her maternal grandmother was informed that she was going to be adopted she decided to take her out of the orphanage and take her home.

Naturally we are disappointed but throughout this journey we have been praying that the Lord would guide us to the exact region, exact orphanage and exact child He wants us to adopt and we believe that this is part of His plan for us, it also means that a child who was placed in an orphanage has been taken home to live with her family again.

Thankfully after delivering the bad news our agency had good news for us as well, they have identified a girl who is available about 1000 miles east of Arkalyk in the former capital city Almaty, they have no further information yet but by Mon/Tue of next week they should be able to confirm her age, health, availability, etc. in greater detail.

We can already see the hand of God, Almaty was always our first region of choice as this is the city where Alex McLean has visited, it is also where Phil Wagner and 'Spiritual Freedom' works however 0ur agency had previously told us it was unlikely as they had never worked there before and the region had only recently reopened for adoption after being closed for a while.

If we do get to travel there it will mean that we will be able to enjoy the fellowship of other Christians during our time in Kazakhstan there is also a chance we will be able to stay in the house owned by Spiritual Freedom. We will also be able to avoid travelling in the country, the Arkalyk trip would have meant an extra return flight plus a 30 hour return train journey!!!

Pray that we will receive good news next week.
Pray that Almaty will be confirmed as our region.
Pray that our paperwork will make its way safely and quickly from Arkalyk to Almaty.

'For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him. 1Sam 1v27.

Philip & Amanda

God is Good

Its been a long time coming but we are just about ready to negotiate the final few obstacles on our adoption path, the Lord has been good to us, especially in the last number of months and we have caught right up with people who started the whole process a couple of years ahead of us. Its good to reflect and give thanks to God for what He has done!

At the beginning of the year our adoption dossier was sent to an agency in the UK called the DFES, it should have been there for 2 months, it came back in 4 weeks!

Our dossier was sent to Kazakhstan in March for translation, its meant to take 8 weeks then once back with us it has to be copied twice and both copies notarised and legalised, it came back in 6 weeks with 2 legalised and notarised copies included! Something which our agency could not believe and have never heard of before!

We then went to England to meet Almat at the Kaz embassy in London to hand over our dossier for processing and dispatch to Kazakhstan, this stage takes on average 3 months and has taken up to 6 months in the past. We rang Almat 2 weeks after our return and he told us it was already processed and in Kazakhstan!!!

Once our dossier entered the information black hole that is the Kazakhstan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Minstry of Education we were told to expect to hear nothing for 3 months, being told that the head honcho was on holiday for a month didn't encourage us! We also expected to have to wait a number of months after our approval before we would be refered a child, thankfully we have a God who 'is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think' Eph 3v20. Not only have we been approved but we were also told that there is a child available immediately!

We are now waiting for the region we are travelling too to issue a letter of invitation (LOI) we need this to get our visa to enter Kazakhstan, once we get that and a few other bits and bobs we are on our way!!!

Pray that we will hear good news about our LOI this week.

I know that was a big chunk of text to get through but it is really encouraging to look back and see the Lords hand guiding and leading us, not only for us but also for all who are praying for our progress.

I promise the next post will have more pictures and less talking!! :)

Philip & Amanda

A little about Kaz

If you know as much about Kazakhstan as we did before we started this whole process you may appreciate a little more info about the country, where it is in the world, it's people, etc. The following is all my own work and is definitely not ripped wholesale from wikipedia! ;)

Republic of Kazakhstan, is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of northern and central Eurasia. Ranked the ninth largest country in the world, it has a territory of 2,717,300 km² (bigger than Western Europe). While located mainly in Asia, a small portion lies to the west of the Ural River and is technically in Europe. It borders Russia, the People's Republic of China, and the Central Asian countries Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and has a coastline on the Caspian Sea.
Despite its vast size, much of the land consists of semi-desert (steppe) terrain. In terms of population, Kazakhstan ranks 62nd in the world, with a population density of less than 6 people per square kilometre (15 per sq. mi.). The total population has declined somewhat since independence, dropping from 16,464,464 in 1989 to 15,300,000 in 2006.

The city we will be adopting from is a small mining city in central Kazakhstan called Arkalyk around 45,000 people live in the city. Historically Arkalyk was a centre for the Soviet space programme. Cosmonauts would land on the huge central Kazakh steppe and come back to Arkalyk before heading to the Baikonur, the Union's premier "space city".

By monday we hope to have firmer information about when we can travel from our coordinator in Arkalyk, a Mr Baurzhan Mukambedzhanov, if anyone has any suggestions how on earth you would pronounce his name we would be more than happy to hear them!!

We will keep you posted!

Philip & Amanda

Lets try some photos...

We spoke with our agency today and they confirmed that everything is still on schedual for travelling before the end of August, we were also greatly reassured about our travel and accomodation arrangements as well, praise the Lord!

I've found a few pictures online from the exact orphanage in Arkalyk we will be visiting, i'm going to attempt to host a few pics here, hopefully this works out ok...

All we have to do now is wait for our letter of invitation to be issued for the Ministry of Education in Kazakhstan, we need this in order to apply for an adoption visa to enter the country. Its going to be kinda hard to concentrate for the next few weeks!!!!

Philip & Amanda

First Ever Entry

Hey All

This is the first entry in our blog recording our adoption journey from Ballywalter in Northern Ireland all the way to Arkalyk in Northern Kazakstan and back again with our new daughter :)

I'm a bit new to the whole blogging experience so hopefully I'll pick it up as i go along...

We will try to keep you all updated with our progress everyday along with a few pictures, requests for prayer and we trust reasons to praise the Lord for answered prayer!


After 3 years of jumping through social services hoops and wading through miles of red tape we are finally approved to adopt from Kazakhstan and stand excitedly at the starting line of our adoption journey, today we will be speaking with our agency and hope to get more information on when we can travel, how we get there and where we will be staying when we arrive.

Pray that we will get good news from our agency today and that we will be allowed to travel as soon as we get our visa.

Praise the Lord that He has brought us to this stage so quickly, the best we could have realistically hoped for at the beginning of the year was to travel in Dec/Jan.

OK, think that's enough to get started, I'll add a few pictures and start making the blog look a bit fancier once i work out what I'm doing :)

Philip & Amanda