Hi friends! We have been moving along steadily in the "gathering documents" phase of this adoption journey! What seemed never-ending only a short while ago is actually coming to a close. The end of this paper chase is in sight! We hope to have our Dossier completed and sent off this coming week! Since we last updated we have received our fingerprint appointment from the US government. Then just one week after being fingerprinted we received our approval letter from the US government! We could not move forward with our Dossier for the Ethiopian government without this approval, so the past week has been spent finalizing details in our Dossier. Through our agency we have an online portal that we find a running checklist of each step of the process. As we complete tasks on our end we are able to upload documents for our agency to approve and then each task is virtually checked off on our portal. Over the past week almost all of the 30 tasks for this phase haven been checked off and approved! With each new day and each task complete I feel a weight removed from my shoulders! We have been anticipating this time for months! We are thrilled for it to finally be here!
This coming week we will head to FED EX to send off our Dossier. We will send it to a special courier called "The Assistant Stork". This courier will deliver our dossier to both the Ethiopian Embassy and the Department of State in Washington D.C. Our dossier will be "authenticated" at both of these places. (honestly I really don't know what this entails) Once "authenticated" the courier will send the completed and authenticated dossier to our Agency in Michigan! Once we have paid the fees owed at this time we will go on our agencies wait list!
Going onto the wait list will begin the next phase of this journey for us- the WAIT.
What are we waiting for? We are waiting for a referral. There are many other families on our agencies wait list. As families are referred children we move closer to number 1 on the list. Our agency knows our guidelines for the children we are adopting and they know the children who are in need of families and connected to the orphanages our agency works with in Ethiopia. When we get to the top of the wait list they will match two children with our family. When they feel they have identified the children just right for our family they will send us the "referral." We will then know their names, see their faces (via email) and know their stories. This is what we will be WAITING for starting next week!
Thank you all for joining us on this journey! Please continue to pray for us! Pray our documents are in order and delivered quickly and without incident. Please pray for provision for the coming financial needs. We have a very large payment due before we can go on the wait list. Please pray for our children- both here and in Ethiopia. Please pray that God would continue to show us more of himself through this process and that others who are following this journey would see him as well!
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| We read this book for a second time as we waited for approval letters. It proved to be as challenging and inspiring the second time as it was the first! If you have not read this- I highly recommend! |
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| Mailing documents to the U.S. government! |
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| Seeking his face each day. Drawing close to him and relying on his strength. And on a side note- beginning a coffee habit. :-) |
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| Receiving letters from the U.S. government! |
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| Getting state seals on documents |
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| The result of 6 months work- gathering and detailing these documents! |
