BRINGING HOME GRACE: Golden Ticket, The Beast, and Shipping

Last Thursday, I posted how I had talked to our USCIS officer and he thought he would be approving us that day. And that it would take a week for us to get the hard copy (no emailing or faxing approvals anymore I guess - I did ask.).  So, when Anna got the mail yesterday, she started signing the "I've got a golden ticket" song. ("Golden Ticket" is the nickname for the immigration approval - the I-171H form - that is the last piece of paperwork needed for the dossier.)  "No way!" I exclaimed. She showed me the envelope and it was just extra copies of our home study from our social worker for our future reference. I didn't look at the rest of the mail because NO WAY was the "Golden Ticket" going to be here already. After all, Monday was a holiday (no mail) and the approvals come from Missouri...NO WAY.

About three hours later, I quickly glance through the mail. We were cleaning for company last night and thought it would be best to at least look at the mail before stashing it.  And then - I saw it. In blue letters. Department of Homeland Security - USCIS. (This is my utterances and conversation to myself - only half of it out loud while Sarah and Anna are staring at me.)  "No way - that can't be it. It's only Tuesday." I rip it open. "It looks different than last time. It's two pages instead of one. Is that it? I don't know.  Where are those letters?  "I-171H" Yep, that's what it says. It can't be. It says it is. Really? I guess it is! No way. I still don't believe it."

I am still in disbelief, Anna calls Pat and sings the song. (Yes, I'm sorry you will have the song stuck in your head the rest of the day. hee hee)


(As a kid, did anyone ever wonder how those 4 people in bed went to the bathroom? Or was that just me?)

Once I start coming out of my shock to think a little bit, Pat and I make a plan to meet at the bank to get the cover sheet notarized. Whew. Done.  Once we are home and back to cleaning, we formulate the plan. Well, Pat is the formulator, not me. I can't formulate anything these days. He'll leave early in the AM (this morning), drive to Madison, get it apostilled using the one-day service, and we'll mail it out from Madison if he can't make it back here in time. (I'm SO thankful he has flexible hours. I would have gone except I had Jonathan's first IEP meeting at 11am. Can't really skip that!)


The Secretary of State office took about 3 hrs to complete the document.  Meanwhile, Pat took his traveling buddies (Anna and Isaac) on a guided tour of the State Capitol. I guess history is done for the day!

The not-so-good part of the day...evidently FedEx doesn't offer the same speedy-quick service they used to (at least not from the store we shipped from).   You know, the one that costs $200+?  The quickest they could get it there was June 5th. Most likely, that will be too late to be submitted on the 6th (special needs dossiers are only submitted on Thursdays). I'm REALLY bummed about that. Really bummed. But, I'm just trusting the Lord's Perfect timing. I just want our little girl HOME asap!

So, the "Beast" is on it's way. Actually, this time around the dossier was much more like a "kitten" than a beast. Experience helps with that. A lot.

I am so thankful to the Lord for moving our process along quickly and smoothly. Praise His Name!  Thank you for your continued prayers and support. Love to you all!

The customary photo
The "Beast" with all of the pretty, shiny gold stars from the apostilling process

(Just one more rambling thing to share with you.  I haven't had the privilege of being at the FedEx store to mail any of our dossiers over to Ukraine. For Elijah's dossier, Pat shipped it from Indianpolis. What a story. Jonathan's dossier was hand-carried over to Ukraine by Max. Providence of God's timing. And then Grace's was shipped today by Pat. I guess God is showing that it is ok to not have "control" over every.single.thing. That's OK! :-))

So very thankful...

...for all of the men and women who have served our country. For the ones that gave their lives.  I am so very guilty of taking our freedoms for granted...especially the freedom to worship who, where, and how we want to. God Bless America!

BRINGING GRACE HOME: WOOHOO!!!

Credit

Yesterday, after we picked up the girls at the airport, we went to downtown Milwaukee for our Dept of Homeland Security USCIS biometric fingerprints. Our appt wasn't until 3pm, but we got there about 10:45 or so.  They were gracious to work us in and we were out of there by 11:45 or so. All went well!

So, I called USCIS today and left a message with our officer. He called back w/in the hour.  (Can I just say how much better this communication process is than 2 1/2 years ago? YAY!) He had quickly reviewed our file beforehand and didn't see any red flags.  He'll review it more closely TODAY and will issue our immigration approval TODAY if nothing comes up. (We're pretty squeaky clean, so it should be fine. LOL)  It takes about a week for us to receive the hard copy as it has to bounce through their system (this is the federal government after all).  We should have the "GOLDEN TICKET" in our hands late next week!!! WOOOHOOOO!!!

Then what?? I'll drive it down to Madtown to get it apostilled (SO thankful our state finally offers one-day service) and then the whole dossier will be on it's way to Ukraine. Our facilitator translates everything as he approves it, so he will only have to get it notarized, sewn together (yes, I said sewn - with string - don't ask :-)) and it will be submitted - if there are no problems of course.

It sounds like it is taking about 8 weeks right now from dossier submission to traveling. :-(  It was only about 4 weeks for the boys. So, I'm praying they speed up and we will still get there in July. I would love that for a birthday present! :-) Of course, we would have loved to have gotten there last month, but paperwork out of our hands just takes time as I explained in my last post about Grace's adoption. Really, we've only had about  2-3 weeks of processing time on our end due to Pat and our social worker being out of town at the same time. But that is the way adoption goes - hurry up and wait - over and over and over again.

Thanks everyone for your prayers!  Please continue to pray we don't run into paperwork snags, esp like THIS one.  This same exact thing happened to another family in our state just a couple months ago.  Inexcusable in my opinion, but what do I know. The whole dossier (minus our I-171H approval) should be here in the next day or two, so we'll see how her spelling is this time as we used the same notary. (We like tradition. lol)

Love to all of you who continue to support us and encourage us! We are truly blessed. Thank you from the bottom of our heart!

So Very Proud - Part II

Last month, I posted about Sarah's accomplishment in earning her first college credits. Well, she now has six more credits for American Literature!  She studied very, very hard and passed her CLEP test with flying colors!  Way to go Sarah! Daddy and I are so very proud of you!!! The Lord has big plans for your life. Sometimes I feel like I am just sitting back to watch it all unfold. :-)

If you visit Sarah's blog, you'll see she just returned from a fun trip with her BFF, Rachel, out to Jamestown, NY to visit the Spitz family.  The girls went out to provide childcare while Lyla had heart surgery.  God's Hand was all over Lyla as the doctors cancelled her surgery due to low oxygen stats.  She developed an infection that afternoon!  She is doing well now though!  So, the girls, much to their dismay, came home early.  Check out her blog for all the fun pictures!

BRINGING GRACE HOME: Dossier Update and Rambling

(Sorry, this got a little long and wordy.)

I have to say I love the ladies down at the State Dept of Justice in Madison.  For the 3rd time in a row, they nailed the state background check letters for our dossier.  They even humor me by using blue ink like I ask them to! :-) (I have asked many others and many do not. Blue ink is not a requirement for Ukraine dossiers but it helps the folks checking the dossier to verify it is an original notary signature, not photocopied.) When the Secretary of State office goofed up the apostille on one of these background letters for Elijah's dossier, they were more than willing to work with me to get a new letter right away. Anyway, it is just such a relief to get a perfect letter and not have to wonder if it will be ok or not. By the way, in case you were wondering, the letters said we had no record. :-)

Just a side story - last summer, Pat was going to volunteer at a VBS that wasn't at our church. The pastor there wanted his date of birth to do a background check.  Now, this is something they SHOULD be doing and I am glad they are doing it. But I had to laugh...I wonder if she wants county, state, Dept of Homeland Security or Interpol background check. We've had them all! hee hee

So, anyway, Grace's dossier is complete except for that Golden Ticket. We got our fingerprint appointment letters last week. We will travel south to visit the Department of Homeland Security the 3rd week in May. (The DHS is right next to my alma mater MSOE. Ya, kinda crazy a stay-at-home mom of seven, going on eight children, has an engineering degree, huh?  I LOVE how God works out the true desires of one's heart! Anyway, it's nice to finally drive to downtown Milwaukee and not get a feeling of dread in my stomach.) Hopefully, we'll receive our immigration approval shortly after and get her dossier sent over by the end of May or beginning of June and get it submitted!  I'm hoping we will be traveling by the end of July. Woohoo!


International adoption is a game of "hurry up and wait" over and over and over and over and over and over again.  From the very beginning of the paper chase to the very end of arriving at the airport. When we started our home study, we got all of our paperwork done and turned into the social worker (SW) within about 2-3 weeks. It would have been sooner, but our SW and Pat were both out of town, so our final visit was out about 3 weeks after we got started.  Home studies are very long and involved. Ours was about 10 pages long, which is actually short compared to some. (It's a little freaky to see your whole life summed up in 10 pages though!) The length depends a lot on the state requirements, and of course, what USCIS wants to see. Ukraine's requirements are pretty simple actually. We had to start over with our home study because in the state of WI, just like Ukraine, documents are only good for six months.  Some of you remember how quickly we did Jonathan's adoption after Elijah got home. We had to redo all documents for that home study too even though Elijah had only been home 3 months. Plus, this time around, we used a new agency b/c our old one no longer does home studies for non-Hague countries like Ukraine.

So, we hurried up and got all of our paperwork turned into our SW , and it took our agency about 4 weeks to complete the draft of the study, and another week or so to get the hard copy in our hands and get our I-600a application in the mail. Our fingerprint appts are about 4-5 weeks after we sent in our I-600a. (Some states allow you to walk-in early once you have the fingerprint appt letter. Not WI! We tried a couple years ago. We failed.) All reasonable. Paperwork just takes time whether we like it or not. We have no control over that. We wait now for our immigration approval. We will then bust our be-hinds to get that Golden ticket apostilled by driving to Madison and paying for same day service. (I'm sending the rest of the dossier to get apostilled w/in the next week or so.) And then pay top dollar to my fav FedEx store in town here to get it into my facilitator's hands asap. Then we will wait.  Wait again for a travel date after we are submitted. See how fun this is!  I love it!!!! :-)

Please pray we get approved very quickly! Thank you to everyone who has shown us so much support during this journey so far. We are SO grateful!

A Black Bag

Some days I ask myself, "What the heck have we gotten ourselves into?" (By the way, I've asked myself that every time I've been "pregnant" since I was pregnant with child #3.) I know I'm not the only one. Today was one of those days. Tonight, my friend, Liz, (Shea's mama) shared a post about how she answers her "What the heck?" days.  She would do it a million times over and so would I...

Please go read her post HERE. (Caution: This is a heavy post and not for young children.)  This may help those who don't understand why we are adopting yet again. Haven't we done enough?  Isn't it someone else's job???  Nope. Not at all.

BRINGING GRACE HOME: Dossier update

(I'm going to label blog posts relating to Grace's adoption as "BRINGING GRACE HOME" so you can decide if you want to read them or not. :-) Our regular posts will be titled as normal.)

Our paperwork to bring Grace home is moving right along.  We received our final home study this week and sent our I-600A off to Texas. YAY!!!  The rest of our dossier is almost complete. We will receive our state police background check letter this week.  We just need approval from our facilitator on all of the documents "print 'n sign" documents and a few others (once my scanner works again! ugh!) and that will be it - except for that pesky - but oh SO important - "Golden Ticket".

(I'll try and have my blog designer (Sarah) put the page back up on this blog for all of the adoption process abbreviations. But for now, if you are new the process or need a refresher, the I-600A is the application sent to the US gov't (USCIS) to get immigration approval to bring Grace back into the country. The approval comes on a form called I-171H, or affectionately known as the "Golden Ticket". The I-171H is part of the dossier and takes the longest to attain. Once we receive approval, we will be able to send the whole dossier over to Ukraine for immediate submission. After we are submitted, we should receive a travel date about 5 weeks later.)

We have sent our POAs (power of attorney) and Grace's letter of inquiry over to her country. It will be good to have official verification that she is indeed available.

Pulling a dossier together is SOOO much easier the 3rd time around. I can't even believe it. Things that took eight hours the first time and 15 minutes the 2nd time, just took about 5 minutes this time. We've still had minor glitches, but nothing that is not easily fixed.

Please pray for a quick immigration approval so we can get over to Grace as soon as possible. Thanks!

So very proud...

Last week, my oldest daughter, Sarah, earned her first college credits!  She did this by studying US History and then taking (and passing!) the History of the US I CLEP test.  So, she now has three college credits to her name.  Not too bad for only being 14 years old and being in 9th grade. :-)

We are so very proud of her! She worked hard and earned her score. But more importantly, we are so proud of her desire to serve the Lord in all that she does and passion to help those in need, especially special needs orphans.

In case you are interested, we used CollegePrep, which is part of the CollegePlus program, to guide her through the process with the help of an accountability mentor. CollegePrep helps homeschoolers earn dual credit - meaning Sarah earned high school and college credit at the same time. CollegePrep also evaluated her critical reasoning strengths and weaknesses, and then she went through a Critical Reasoning course which will help her with test taking her whole life. She will continue on her path of dual credit throughout her high school career and hopes to shave a year off her time in college. That would make all of us very happy!

Our "Real" Big News!

Ok, so I hope you don't mind I had a little fun yesterday with it being April Fool's Day. :-) (To those of you who emailed me, I'm very sorry, really.) The picture I posted yesterday was actually from February 2006 when I found out I was pregnant with Rebekah. Heehee

BUT......I am actually pregnant...sort of...I'm "paper pregnant"!  Yes, that's right!!! We are adopting again!!! Lord willing, it will be a little girl this time.  Yes, a little girl with Down syndrome, and yes, from that same "Eastern European" country that we know and love so much. Our hearts belong in the country that gave us our two youngest boys, that gave Sarah her passion and mission for life, and that will give us our 5th daughter and 8th child here on earth. (Of course, we would go wherever the Lord called us.)

This journey started out a little different than our last two adoption journeys.  Pat came home from his work trip to Russia and told me a week later that he felt the Lord was calling us to adopt a little girl with Down syndrome. We just didn't know who yet. It took us a few weeks to seek the Lord's discernment and we believe we have found her.  And again, different than our other journeys, we will not be sharing "who" we are adopting until we are in country, either when we get her referral or after court. We'll have to see how things go.  There are a few reasons for this confidentiality that I can't discuss there. Sorry, but that's just the way we need to do it this time. I hope you understand.

We are hoping to travel in late July/August, but only the Lord knows.  So please join us in celebrating with us (if you are truly happy for us, 'cuz not everyone is, but that is totally fine) as we seek to bring our newest daughter, Grace, home. We would appreciate prayers too of course. The attacks on our family pretty much began immediately, but we trust in the Lord.  I would love prayers for a continued smooth adoption process and paperwork. Things are going well so far.  Just let me say compiling a dossier is a breeze the 3rd time around on this end (so far). Hopefully, USCIS immigration approval will go smoothly too.

Our kids are SUPER excited too!  They were literally jumping up and down when we told them. :-)  I love that the Lord has given them a heart for the orphan and a willingness to open their hearts to another sibling yet again. Rachel (3 years old) has already informed Sarah is her favorite big sister is Grace, not her. :-) She's got it all figured out. And Anna said a very beautiful thing. Referring to the family photo at the top of the blog, she said, "Look Mom! There is a spot for Grace right in front between Rachel and Elijah." She's so right. It definitely looks like a hole that needs to be filled!

Our Big News!