Can't Wait to Wait!

I can't wait to start waiting! Adoption is all about waiting!

We mailed off our I600a to USCIS on November 30^th. We received our fingerprint appointment for December 26^th but were unable to go with the holiday so took a chance & walked in on December 19^th. We didn't know if they would let us do it early or not as they specifically say you are not coming in without your appointment. Thankfully we had no issues & got in & out quickly. We are now in the process of waiting on our USCIS approval. It could come in the next few days our could be a couple of months. We are really praying for the first option! Some of the forms are required to be dated within 6 months of submitting our dossier & some of those will be expiring in February so we are getting down to the wire! We only have a few more things we need & it would be amazing if everything got done in the next week. Prayers are much appreciated for speed!

I am so thankful for our Facebook Group for our agency. I have learned so much from the people in the group! If anyone else is with West Sands or their partner agencies & is not a part of the group, let me know & I can add you! There are some very big prayer requests for those in the group. One family left their children 2 weeks ago after their court appointment where they were supposed to be name legal guardians of their children but a form wasn't done in country so they had to leave without that. Regardless they wouldn't have taken their children home yet but they aren't able to disclose pictures of their children until that's done & is also setting back the next stage of the adoption of being submitted to Embassy so they can bring their children home. There are lots of other people in the group that need various prayer requests! I really don't know what I would do without this group.

Another prayer request for orphans in Russia. If you haven't heard, they have ended all Russian adoptions by Americans. This means many children that were already in the process of being adopted & were waiting for their families to get them, now will remain orphans. Families were already in love with their children that they may never get to see again. Many people who haven't adopted before don't realize that even just starting the process, these children ARE already your children even though you may or may not have every seen them, met them or know anything about them. It would be like losing one of your biological children. What would you do? PLEASE pray for this that something can be done to undo this! Another awful thing about Russian orphans is that children with special needs often are put into mental institutions because no one wants them even if there are no mental issues. It is so sad. And there are many Americans open to adopting them & now can't.

What happens next for us? We have to wait for our USCIS approval. We will then mail all of our dossier documents to West Sands. They will be authenticated & sent to Ethiopia. At that time we will officially be put on the waiting list. It could be 6-9 months (or more or less) until we receive our referral. Once our referral is received we will wait for a court date when we will first see our child(ren). That could be 1-3 months. We will then leave them & wait to be cleared by embassy. That process is changing & time increasing so it could be 2-5 months before we can bring them home. What a glorious day that will be!

Thanks for following us & for your prayers! If you want to get updates via email you can do so on the right side of the page.

Homestudy is Complete!

I'm not doing very well keeping this updated on a regular basis. Trying to think what all has happened in this last month. We FINALLY got our official homestudy in the mail on Friday! Yay!!! Not very happy with the timeline on that but there's nothing we can do about that. I immediately had Jeremy go to FedEx on Friday afternoon to ship off our I600a to USCIS. That can take about 5 weeks – 3 months to get back. This give us clearance from the US to adopt a child internationally. This will take the longest of the items that are required for our dossier. I'm really hoping to complete our dossier at the beginning of January. If not we will have to re-request copies of our birth certificates & marriage license as all documents have to be dated within 6 months of being submitted to Ethiopia. The dossier is the last step before we get placed on the wait list. It's funny to think about being excited to “WAIT” but if you ask any adoptive parent they will understand! Of course that will be extremely hard to WAIT but I know God will work in his timing. We have no idea what the wait time will be for us. Hoping not too long but we also need LOTS more funding before we receive our referral as we will owe $8500 before we can accept the referral & also another $5500 if we get 2 siblings. I am going to start applying to grants over the next few months & hopefully we will receive enough. Many of the grants take several months to find out if we are accepted & how much we will receive. The grant applications require a bunch of paperwork as well. This is all SO much work but it will be so worth it to finally get to have our child(ren) home! We just got our first order of sheets in from our fundraiser & raised $522 from that one order. These sheets are amazing!!! So soft & a great deal. Make sure you contact me if you want to place an order!

As always, thank you all for your prayers & support! Keep the prayers coming! Please feel free to share our journey with others that may be interested!