Savior, He can move the mountains!!!

Savior, He can move the mountains...Our God is Mighty to Save, He is Mighty to Save!

Ephesians 3:20-21
   "Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever!"

Psalm 145: 3-7
   "Great is the Lord and highly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable.  One generation shall praise Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts.  On the glorious splendor of Thy majesty and on Thy wonderful works I will meditate.  And men shall speak of the power of Thine awesome acts; and I will tell of Thy greatness.  They shall eagerly utter the memory of Thine abundant goodness, and shout joyfully of Thy righteousness."

Today we celebrate God for all He has accomplished thus far!  For His abundant goodness to us!  For His incomprehensible grace to us!  Today He moved the first of many mountains is bringing Igor home.  We were given the referral from the SDA office!

 

This was an almost impossible task.  One that only God could accomplish for us. 
We are so thankful for Alex who fought relentlessly for this referral for the Moore family and for us.  SDA appointments never last more than an hour.  If you combine the total time of the two days we spent at the SDA office...this took 7 hours.  7 hours of Alex arguing with the Deputy Minister.  Even when we left last night we did not know if she or the Director would sign for our referral.  But God moved them to sign and we know we can trust Him to clear away the rest of the obstacles if that is His will.

For those of you who are unsure of all the adoption terms.  Our dossier (large packet of forms which includes a home study and many other documents) was approved by Ukraine in May.  A referral is a direct match with a child.  We have now been officially matched with Igor and given permission to pursue adopting him.  The next step is to get the director's approval from Pishana and Igor's agreement to be adopted by us.  Then we will wait to be assigned a court date when he is legally declared to be our child.

Alex and Nastya have strongly cautioned us not to get our hopes up.  They told us that this adoption could get shut down at any point.  We are forging through new territory.  They have no idea how long it will take to get new copies of Igor's documents printed.  They told us Igor's director at Pishana could say "no".  The Deputy Minister will have to give approval for us to get a court date and she could say "no".  The judge in court could say "no".  So we will celebrate today's victory and we will trust God to accomplish His plan in His timing and in His way. 

We have hired a driver to pick us up at 5am tomorrow morning and take us back to Pishana (a 4 hour trip) There we will meet with the director of the orphanage and another facilitator in the area.  The director will need to give approval of the adoption and Igor will need to sign a paper agreeing to be adopted.  (We aren't worried about his answer!)  Please pray that through the translator we will be able to communicate with Igor the process that remains ahead of us.  Last time he expected us to take him home when we arrived.  We need him to understand that much of the process lies ahead of us, yet be able to rejoice in what God has done for him thus far.  We must return to Kiev tomorrow night as we plan to fly home Thursday morning. 

So we will continue to need the help of our prayer warriors!  The battle is not won yet.  I appreciated the words to this song, that Sue Lowe shared with me yesterday.

  In heavenly armour we'll enter the land
The battle belongs to the Lord
No weapon that's fashioned against us will stand
The battle belongs to the Lord
And we sing glory, honour
Power and strength to the Lord
We sing glory, honour
Power and strength to the Lord

When the power of darkness comes in like a flood
The battle belongs to the Lord
He's raised up a standard, the power of His blood
The battle belongs to the Lord

When your enemy presses in hard, do not fear
The battle belongs to the Lord
Take courage, my friend, your redemption is near
The battle belongs to the Lord