So yesterday John and I received our "On Deck" email from our adoption agency. Exciting. This basically lets us know that they think we are getting close to getting a referral and want to make sure that we have all our paperwork in order. This is what the email said about a referral.
"Estimated Referral Timeframe
While there are many unknowns in the referral process, and this email gives no dates or guarantees, America World anticipates that your family could receive a referral within the next one to three months. Referrals arrive sporadically throughout the month."
The email itself was much longer and I won't bore you with all the other details we have to worry about. It feels weird that this might happen soon because we've been in such a holding pattern for so long. Please continue to pray for us and our little girl. Thank you so much!
11.04.2009
10.26.2009
It's been a while...
Sorry it's been a while for all of you following this. We haven't had a lot going on in the world of the adoption for a while. Thank you all for your continued prayers and support. Since March we have been waiting and waiting. But it hasn't been as bad as one might think. We've been reading books on our list for the adoption agency and they have been really good. Since neither John or I were adopted, it is good to learn what issues might come with an adopted child. Also, John is again on the hunt for a job, but nothing has come along yet.
We had our homestudy update a few weeks ago where our social worker came over to our home and made sure that nothing had changed too much since her last visit. We had rearranged our bedroom and added a bookshelf (she noticed both!) but I don't think that's enough to warrant too much of a change in our homestudy. It was really nice to talk to her and be able to ask her questions in person and it really started to feel like this might really happen. After we talked with her we emailed our case worker at our agency's home office and she said that the current wait for healthy females from Ethiopia right now is about 9-11 months. That means that if we stay on schedule, we could receive a referral sometime between mid December and mid February! That is very exciting, but also kind of scary. It would be wonderful if God would see fit to give John a full time job before we got a referral. Also, since we have been working on this for almost 3 years now, it is weird to think that it might really happen. Crazy!
Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts on this right now and an update for everyone. It has been a long journey, but having kids usually is I hear. Thanks so much, we'll let you know when we get any information!
We had our homestudy update a few weeks ago where our social worker came over to our home and made sure that nothing had changed too much since her last visit. We had rearranged our bedroom and added a bookshelf (she noticed both!) but I don't think that's enough to warrant too much of a change in our homestudy. It was really nice to talk to her and be able to ask her questions in person and it really started to feel like this might really happen. After we talked with her we emailed our case worker at our agency's home office and she said that the current wait for healthy females from Ethiopia right now is about 9-11 months. That means that if we stay on schedule, we could receive a referral sometime between mid December and mid February! That is very exciting, but also kind of scary. It would be wonderful if God would see fit to give John a full time job before we got a referral. Also, since we have been working on this for almost 3 years now, it is weird to think that it might really happen. Crazy!
Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts on this right now and an update for everyone. It has been a long journey, but having kids usually is I hear. Thanks so much, we'll let you know when we get any information!
3.22.2009
We've hit another mile stone!
So, we finally mailed our dossier at the beginning of this month. The adoption agency received it (meaning, it did not get lost in the mail!) and reviewed its contents. We had to resend a couple of items (neither were a big deal) and they told John that everything was good to go. Our case worker told John that they would be sending it off to Washington DC this past Friday and then off to Ethiopia.
However... we got an email yesterday that said they have sent our entire dossier off to ETHIOPIA as of Friday. So, it's on its way to the Ethiopian government and our 7-12 month time clock can finally start ticking. We will be trying to read as many books as possible and prepare for the arrival of a referral.
Please pray that the paperwork will go quickly through the hands of the Ethiopian government, that there will be no problems and that we can get a referral as quickly as possible. After we accept a referral, we travel eight weeks later to go get her. So it's possible we would get a referral as soon as late October (but it could be longer grandparents)! Obviously John and I were very excited and hope you all can share in our joy as well. Thanks to everyone who has been on this journey with us, we couldn't do it without you.
However... we got an email yesterday that said they have sent our entire dossier off to ETHIOPIA as of Friday. So, it's on its way to the Ethiopian government and our 7-12 month time clock can finally start ticking. We will be trying to read as many books as possible and prepare for the arrival of a referral.
Please pray that the paperwork will go quickly through the hands of the Ethiopian government, that there will be no problems and that we can get a referral as quickly as possible. After we accept a referral, we travel eight weeks later to go get her. So it's possible we would get a referral as soon as late October (but it could be longer grandparents)! Obviously John and I were very excited and hope you all can share in our joy as well. Thanks to everyone who has been on this journey with us, we couldn't do it without you.
2.01.2009
Frustration
I titled this blog Frustration because that is the best way to describe yesterday. It's really not anyone's fault, but John and I had reviewed all of our paperwork a week ago yesterday and decided that it was very do-able to mail our dossier off yesterday. We had some final paperwork to get done this week and then we would be able to get the last of our stuff notarized yesterday at the bank and mail it. Yeah! We were excited all week and finished typing some letters, got our police clearance done and asked our very accommodating friends to (yes, again) get their letters of reference re-notarized since the year time limit had passed. Have I mentioned that we have wonderful friends and family? We were all set and yesterday morning we got everything together and were double-checking our instructions for the dossier when we discovered that two of our forms for the dossier have to be certified.
Now for all of you who have not adopted internationally, getting something certified is when you go and get something notarized and then you have to send it in to the Secretary of State for the state it was notarized in so that he/she can certify that the notary was an actual notary in that state and not just someone off the street with a fake notary stamp. Whew. We actually did have this done for our birth certificates and marriage certificate, but didn't realize that we had to do it for these two forms as well. So, after some disappointment and a lot of stress (with two of us reading about 20 pages of instructions for this packet, it got overwhelming), we went to the bank where a very nice notary helped us with about 8 documents. We will mail the forms on Monday to be certified and when we get those back, we should finally be ready to mail it all in. Hopefully we've done everything else right!
Some people ask me why Angelina Jolie doesn't have to go through all the paperwork to adopt. My guess is that she does have to do the same paperwork that we do. Except for the fact that she is probably not the one doing it. She probably has hired someone really good at organizing to get it all done speedy quick. I'm trying to be content with the timing God has for us. John and I were talking last night and we are fully convinced that if we had gotten her earlier, it wouldn't have worked out as well. I might not have been able to stay home with her, or we might have bought a house that was too expensive that we'd be stuck in now, or it might just have been the wrong child. God is teaching us more than ever that we do not have control over this no matter how much we want to and that His timing is better than anything we could imagine. Still, I want to meet my little girl very soon, so please continue to pray that we would get the paperwork finished as soon as possible!
Now for all of you who have not adopted internationally, getting something certified is when you go and get something notarized and then you have to send it in to the Secretary of State for the state it was notarized in so that he/she can certify that the notary was an actual notary in that state and not just someone off the street with a fake notary stamp. Whew. We actually did have this done for our birth certificates and marriage certificate, but didn't realize that we had to do it for these two forms as well. So, after some disappointment and a lot of stress (with two of us reading about 20 pages of instructions for this packet, it got overwhelming), we went to the bank where a very nice notary helped us with about 8 documents. We will mail the forms on Monday to be certified and when we get those back, we should finally be ready to mail it all in. Hopefully we've done everything else right!
Some people ask me why Angelina Jolie doesn't have to go through all the paperwork to adopt. My guess is that she does have to do the same paperwork that we do. Except for the fact that she is probably not the one doing it. She probably has hired someone really good at organizing to get it all done speedy quick. I'm trying to be content with the timing God has for us. John and I were talking last night and we are fully convinced that if we had gotten her earlier, it wouldn't have worked out as well. I might not have been able to stay home with her, or we might have bought a house that was too expensive that we'd be stuck in now, or it might just have been the wrong child. God is teaching us more than ever that we do not have control over this no matter how much we want to and that His timing is better than anything we could imagine. Still, I want to meet my little girl very soon, so please continue to pray that we would get the paperwork finished as soon as possible!
1.01.2009
Finally, an update!
Okay, I'm sorry for the long lapse since my last post. The paperwork part isn't going as fast as we would like, so sometimes it's discouraging to get on here and announce that we really have no news... We do have some news, though not as good as we would like.
We submitted our immigration paperwork to the USCIS back in November and were pleased to see that it had been processed and waiting for us when we returned from Christmas vacation. The United States Government has now approved us as adoptive parent and (presumably) won't try to take our child from us when we bring her back to the U.S. This is a good thing. Also, we got our marriage certificate and both birth certificates authenticated by their respective Secretaries of State, so that is another thing off the list.
We have a few more things we know we need to do. We are waiting for our case worker to return from vacation (Monday) to tell us if there are anythings we do not know we need to do before we send all our paperwork to Virginia (our adoption agency's headquarters). Once we are able to do that, they send it to Washington, DC, where the US Government looks at it again and then it will be sent on to Ethiopia where it will be translated into Amharic and processed. This process can take anywhere from 7-12 months we are being told.
Please pray that we would complete this paperwork quickly as things do have time limits and will start to expire throughout this year. With all the talk this Christmas, I don't know what our families will do if we do not have a little girl by next December 25. We, too, are very anxious of course as well.
I will try to write soon to post all the great gifts we've been receiving already. We have so much support in this, it's unbelievable. I don't know how else we would be doing all this! Thanks so much for your love and prayers.
We submitted our immigration paperwork to the USCIS back in November and were pleased to see that it had been processed and waiting for us when we returned from Christmas vacation. The United States Government has now approved us as adoptive parent and (presumably) won't try to take our child from us when we bring her back to the U.S. This is a good thing. Also, we got our marriage certificate and both birth certificates authenticated by their respective Secretaries of State, so that is another thing off the list.
We have a few more things we know we need to do. We are waiting for our case worker to return from vacation (Monday) to tell us if there are anythings we do not know we need to do before we send all our paperwork to Virginia (our adoption agency's headquarters). Once we are able to do that, they send it to Washington, DC, where the US Government looks at it again and then it will be sent on to Ethiopia where it will be translated into Amharic and processed. This process can take anywhere from 7-12 months we are being told.
Please pray that we would complete this paperwork quickly as things do have time limits and will start to expire throughout this year. With all the talk this Christmas, I don't know what our families will do if we do not have a little girl by next December 25. We, too, are very anxious of course as well.
I will try to write soon to post all the great gifts we've been receiving already. We have so much support in this, it's unbelievable. I don't know how else we would be doing all this! Thanks so much for your love and prayers.
9.06.2008
We Had Our Home Study!
Or at least the first one. Our social worker did come over last Saturday and inspect our apartment, our apartment's pool, and us. It turns out that we have plenty of space for a child, the fence surrounding the pool at our complex is actually taller than it needs to be and she didn't make any weird comments about us either. Seems like things are going well at this point.
We each have to meet with her individually, but that should happen this week for both of us. Then she will send our home study to the courts so that we can get re-certified as adoptive parents (Arizona is apparently the only state that requires this). We can now start on the immigration paperwork and the rest of the stuff we need for our dossier.
There seems to be a little bit more to do in the way of paperwork, but these people seem to know what they are doing much more than the other adoption agency (or at least they are communicating those things to us better). So, even though we have had to start over, it should be done correctly when it is finally done.
Things to pray for:
1) That we can finish the rest of the paperwork with as few delays as possible.
2) That our doctor's office can fill out the forms correctly this time (yes, we have to go back to that wretched place and have them fix the forms they filled out. I would like to blame the doctor 100%, but I do think it is partly the agency's fault for not putting all the instructions on the forms the first time).
3) That we can prepare emotionally and spiritually for the waiting process once we get through this.
We each have to meet with her individually, but that should happen this week for both of us. Then she will send our home study to the courts so that we can get re-certified as adoptive parents (Arizona is apparently the only state that requires this). We can now start on the immigration paperwork and the rest of the stuff we need for our dossier.
There seems to be a little bit more to do in the way of paperwork, but these people seem to know what they are doing much more than the other adoption agency (or at least they are communicating those things to us better). So, even though we have had to start over, it should be done correctly when it is finally done.
Things to pray for:
1) That we can finish the rest of the paperwork with as few delays as possible.
2) That our doctor's office can fill out the forms correctly this time (yes, we have to go back to that wretched place and have them fix the forms they filled out. I would like to blame the doctor 100%, but I do think it is partly the agency's fault for not putting all the instructions on the forms the first time).
3) That we can prepare emotionally and spiritually for the waiting process once we get through this.
8.27.2008
New Home Study Time
Okay, so barring any other unexpected delays, we should be having our home study this Saturday at 11:00am. We have (only by the grace of God) kept our apartment clean this week and should only have to vacuum and dust (and maybe mop the kitchen) before our visit. It should be a little less hectic at least.
John has been working back at MasterPieces, but only temporarily. They need some help during the holiday season (believe it or not, companies are already getting things ready for Christmas). It is as good a way to make a little extra money as any. We are still asking God for some direction as far as permanent employment goes, so you can still be praying for that for us. We are seriously looking at starting our own business (with a little help from the Lings) where John and Andrew would design freelance and also do things like wedding invitations, stationary, etc. Please keep us in your prayers- and don't forget our little girl as well. Thank you so much!
John has been working back at MasterPieces, but only temporarily. They need some help during the holiday season (believe it or not, companies are already getting things ready for Christmas). It is as good a way to make a little extra money as any. We are still asking God for some direction as far as permanent employment goes, so you can still be praying for that for us. We are seriously looking at starting our own business (with a little help from the Lings) where John and Andrew would design freelance and also do things like wedding invitations, stationary, etc. Please keep us in your prayers- and don't forget our little girl as well. Thank you so much!
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