So tonight we were getting everything ready to send in to USCIS (immigration) to get our clearance updated. When we originally filled out our clearance forms, they were for a child from birth to 24 months. Since our child is now over 24 months, this will not work. They literally won't let her in the country if she does not match our paperwork. So, we were sending in the necessary items to get this updated to 3 years of age. While going through our paperwork, we discovered that we never sent in the updated homestudy that we had done in November. Each update you do has to get sent in to USCIS as well.

So, we had a bit of a panic attack when we realized this and were trying to figure out if this was a big deal or not. We don't actually know for sure, so we would like you all to pray that USCIS will get everything they need on this attempt and our oversight would not delay the process. We think that it will be okay because our homestudy (as far as immigration goes) was not actually supposed to expire until June or so. Please pray that this will go smoothly!

We have not heard about a court date or travel dates yet, but hope to hear sometime this week. I will let you know when we do. We are praying for our little girl a lot this week- that she remains as happy as she looks in her pictures.

Referral is here!

I didn't update this right away because there were so many people we wanted to tell in person. Then time just got away from me I guess. We got our referral on December 23, 2009. A referral is when they refer a specific child to the adopting family and they can either accept that child or not. They send medical records and pictures and what they know about his/her background. So John got a phone call from our adoption agency, America World, the day before Christmas Eve to let us know that they had our referral and they would be emailing it to us that day. It was so great that it happened that day because it was the last day the office was open until after New Year's!

John called me to let me know because I was out with my mom's side of the family having our annual Women's Holiday Lunch. We checked the email later that day together and got to see pictures of what might possibly be the most beautiful little 2 year old that ever lived! Until she's officially ours, we can't post details about her, but we will put pictures up as soon as we can. She has beautiful big eyes and she looks sooo happy in her pictures. We are ecstatic of course and mailed back our acceptance letter as soon as we could!

So, what now? Well, our agency is setting up a court date in Ethiopia. This is where a judge will look over all our paperwork and decide whether we can be this child's parents. We don't have the date of when this will happen, but we should know very soon. Then our agency will set our tentative travel dates (we don't actually book travel until we pass court of course). We travel 2-4 weeks after we pass court.

My mind has been going crazy lately about all this. I'm so excited to be able to finally have a face and a name to go along with all my daydreams and prayers. When you don't know how old your child will be when you get her, it is hard to imagine things (Will she be walking yet? Will she need a crib or a bed? Will she still drink out of a bottle?) Now that I have an age and face, I have been imagining so much more. Also, John is still looking for employment that is full time and as the time draws near we are both getting more anxious about it. I go through waves of believing that God is going to provide something right at the right time- he will show his glory in a way that only he can! And at other times, I will admit I'm frustrated that he hasn't done it in my timing. I only allow fleeting thoughts about what it will look like if John doesn't find something soon- but I feel deep down that God put a desire for me to be able to be the primary care taker of my daughter and he will provide a way for me to do it.

This week is the 6th annual Week of Prayer at our church, Second Mile. The whole community prays and fasts together. I really feel like God is going to reveal himself to John and me more than he has before, especially on this issue. I read a blog yesterday of a family that used our agency and adopted a one year old last year. It was amazing to see their videos and read their thoughts and experiences. One thing that stood out to me was how well taken care of the children seemed to be at the transition home. Their nannies love them and really showed it. That makes me so happy I start to cry every time I think about it. Even if we can't go get her for a few more months, she is in good hands. The kids seem to be individuals to the people taking care of them- not just another child. This makes me soooo glad!

Thank you for praying for us during this time. Remember to pray for a way of provision for our family and for our little girl to be loved and healthy while we anxiously wait to bring her to her forever home. Please also pray that I would really process this all during this week as I do have a tendency to ignore things that are hard. Let me feel the full emotions that God has for me, this week especially!

On Deck

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!

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'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.

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!

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.