A Busy, Productive Day!

Yesterday was a full, busy day! The highlight of the day was sending off our I-600A application to the USCIS in Texas! Yahoo!!! The home study is complete! PLEASE PRAY for a very QUICK approval. Please pray for the "right" orphan petition officer to receive our file - one that will work quickly and has a "heart". (Unfortunately, approval times seemed to be based on which officer receives the application.) Please pray that once we get our fingerprint appointments that we will be able to go in early w/o any hassles. (We need biometric fingerprinting done in Milwaukee before we are approved.) I've been saying all along that we need a miracle to get this approval in time. Miracles are exactly what God is in the business of doing. We are believing for this miracle! :-)


Let's see...what else? We went to the county sheriff's dept to get our black ink fingerprints done for our state background checks. I'll hopefully get that sent off today. Pat and I both went in together since he was off yesterday in between working shifts. We had all the kids with us of course. I went back first and had a nice chat with the detective about EE and homeschooling and this and that as he was rolling my fingers around on the ink. Then Pat went back. No problems. Please pray for a quick turn around on this one too.

And then finally, since Pat and I were in the same vehicle at the same time during banking hours, we stopped at the bank with our pack of blue pens to get some "easy" dossier documents notarized. We had about 12 of them done. (I think there is about 35-40 total.) These documents are "self generated" - sheets that get attached to copies of our passports, etc. I still need my state-side paperwork helper to check them, but they should be fine. Most of the kids handled all this running around pretty well. Suckers at the bank always help too!

We are moving right along. Praise the Lord! Hang on, Elijah.  Mommy and Daddy will be there as soon as we can...

Timeline

I realized that when we started this blog we were already in the swing of things.  I wanted to make sure we were officially committed to Elijah before I started. So, I wanted to back up and explain a few things. Some the timeline is explained on the right sidebar (scroll down a bit). But there is more that's not there.

 

When I first inquired about Aloysha (that's Elijah's name on RR - we are changing it), we weren't able to officially commit to him right away because Andrea (RR Director) needed to get verification that Aloysha was still there (or even existed - yikes!). She said she'd had a hard time getting updates on him. New pictures were coming too! One of her in-country facilitators needed to take the photos and get the updates. Elijah's orphanage isn't very close to where the facilitators live. It might be a little bit. Meanwhile, on Michelle's advice, we got started on our home study. I'm SO glad we did. It went very quickly and would have been even quicker had Pat not been on his mission trip the first 3 weeks of July. Two days before Pat got home, I got the email from Andrea!  Three current photos of our little boy! I was SOOO excited!!! I cried...imagine that...He was just so precious and beautiful. I couldn't believe my eyes. Here are those 3 photos.

  

This bottom one is my favorite!

As my mom said, "You just want to go in there and scoop him up!" I couldn't agree more. We can't wait to do exactly that.

 

As we were getting the paperwork submitted to RR, Andrea informed me that we were in a time of the year that we either needed to go SUPER fast or just get things done w/o a rush.  As it turns out, the branch of Elijah's gov't that accepts the dossiers is closing from November 1st to possibly February 1st!  Yikes!!! That means that our dossier needs to be in the mail the first week of October to allow time for translation. I felt we could get the majority of the dossier done, except for that I-171H approval. They were currently running 2-3 months for approval.  The home study needs to be attached to the I-600A application, which gives us the I-171H. (Are you still with me? :-) The right sidebar has a glossary of terms to help both of us! We are learning right along with everyone else.)  We don't have 3 months...

We needed to PRAY! We needed to decide if we were going to "go for it" on the quick submission or not. While it seems perfectly obvious that we should get him outta there ASAP, we still wanted to be in God's will. There were other factors to consider.  If we are submitted before November 1st, we most likely would travel in December, which is great! But here's a list of other things we needed to think about:

• Pat has ZERO vacation time left this year (remember that mission trip?)
• One or both of us might be traveling over Christmas
• Much less time for fundraising
• Less time to get (and pay for) a different van if we need one.

There were other things that we came up with in our "human-ness", but I can't recall them at the moment.

Anyway, we prayed and knew the Lord wanted us to attempt the quick submission. If we are submitted, He will get ALL of the glory! All of those things on the list above will melt away. If we aren't, He will get ALL of the glory! Maybe that sounds like a cop-out to you, but if we don't make it, God has a reason and even if we can't see it why right away, I believe at some point we will. His plan and timing are always perfect!  As a side note, if we are submitted after February 1st, I'm guessing with the backlog it will be at least April before we get him home. My heart absolutely breaks to even think of that.

So, PLEASE PRAY for God's miraculous hand to work in getting our I-171H approval VERY quickly, as well as smooth sailing for the rest of our dossier. Our application will go in early this week I hope.

To summarize, here's our "hoped for" timeline:

• I-600A application in this week (waiting on final copy of home study)
• Finish dossier documents by mid-September and have them apostilled
• Get biometric fingerprints in Sept which are needed for I-171H approval
• Receive I-171H by the end of September
• Send dossier over to EE first week in October and translation started
• Dossier submitted before November 1st
• Get travel date in November
• Travel in December!

Like I said, this is our "hoped for" timeline. I'm very well aware that any one of these pieces could "hiccup" at any time. We will deal with it if they come up. But I'm also aware that we serve an awesome, powerful Lord that could even accelerate this timeline!  I can't wait to see how He works this all out...

Employer Letter - Check!

We are moving right along in assembling our dossier. Another one of the pieces we need is a letter from Pat's employer stating he has a job, is in good standing and what his salary is. Yesterday in the mail, I received the letter.  It looks GREAT!  Nancy, my most wonderful state-side paperwork helper, approved it and that's one more thing checked of the list. YAY!  And guess what?!? It was right on the first try! Pat's boss's secretary ROCKS!

Interesting thing to note: Since Pat's company is based in Indiana, I need to send this document down to Indianapolis to get apostilled. Each state needs to apostille documents notarized in their own state.  Not a big deal to send it down. The bonus is that Indiana has FREE apostilling! Our state is $10/document.

We have a few more "big" pieces to get yet for "the beast". The homestudy and agency licenses we should have early next week.  Notarized state background checks, mortgage verification and proof of living where we live...I've gotten a start on these, but hope to get them in full swing next week. Of course, the last BIG piece will be the I-171H approval from our gov't. Please continue to pray for God's hand to work a miracle for a quick approval. Thanks!

Home Study is almost done!

The home study is a big piece of getting things moving along in the adoption process. Our most awesome social worker, Amanda, sent us the draft of our home study yesterday! She is "speedy quick"! It looks great to me, besides a few misspellings of our last name. She certainly isn't the first one to do that.  Just imagine, our whole lives summed up in just 10 pages. :-) And we were humbled to see some of the comments that our 5 references submitted to her. You guys are the best! We really appreciate your help in getting the forms turned in and for your honest comments. We couldn't have done it without you!

Today, my state-side paperwork helper/approver will read through it from the viewpoint of what EE wants to see in it, as well as the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). I'll send in the last half of our home study fee and we'll get notarized copies of the home study. We'll use them to send in our application to USCIS to get approval to bring an adopted child back into the States. (That's kind of important!)  We also need to send a copy in with our dossier to EE. So, things are moving along nicely. Praise God!

Our First Home Study Visit

Well, we survived!  I think it went really well. Our social worker, Amanda, was very, very nice and made us feel very comfortable. None of the questions were too hard of course. The hardest part was getting the house at least picked up and somewhat cleaned before she got here, while finishing the end of the paperwork. I think the freshly mopped floor was still wet when she got there!  I made sure to tell her that she could keep her shoes on...And with 5 kids here, we needed a little drama too.  Sweet Baby R was sitting on my lap and threw her NUK. It knocked my water glass over onto the table and into poor Amanda's lap! Thankfully, there was only about an inch of water left in it and it missed our paperwork. Hopefully she'll still approve us! :-)

But on a more serious note, we have ALL of our home study paperwork done. YAY! Well, we're just missing one document, which hopefully we can get this week. I have to admit I was initially overwhelmed with the paperwork list for the home study.  But as I worked through it little by little, it wasn't bad at all. I'm hoping I can say that for the dossier paperwork when I'm done. (I'm doubtful though.) That list can be overwhelming. Now that we've completed the home study paperwork and on-line classes, I'm getting back to the dossier paperwork. I'm scanning in documents right now to send to my RR state-side helper. She checks the documents to be sure they are ok before sending them to get apostilled and then over to our EE country. RR has a wonderful group of volunteers to help us through this process.  To say EE is picky about paperwork is an understatement.

Our second home study visit is this Friday already. Amanda will come back and meet with Pat and I individually to ask questions about the autobiographies we wrote and other things I suppose. She seemed confident that the home study would be completed very quickly! That is GREAT news.  I'll have to explain why in a different post, but the sooner we can get Elijah home, the better.