Thursday, January 8, 2009

Oh my it has been a long time

Okay, for those of you keeping (trying to keep) up to date on our adoption progress, my sincerest apologies.  How time really does fly.
Well on December 17, Gladney approved us to adopt from Ethiopia.  YEAH!  So now we are officially in the next phase (preparing our dossier).  This is the important documents that will go to Ethiopia.
Today Kellar and I will be going downtown to the police department to be fingerprinted.  Yes, you may be asking like I have (we were fingerprinted by United States Immigration) so why a new set of fingerprints by the FBI?  I still have no answer other than another step in the process of international adoption actually I believe domestic adoptions are fingerprinted at the local police dept.  Once this is complete it will be mailed to FBI to be processed.
We have also been working on some additional paperwork.  Every document included in the dossier needs to be authenticated by the Secretary of State from which the document originated.  For us this means sending stuff to Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Texas (our agency state as well as health insurance company location).  After this step is complete Gladney will place on on the waiting list for our son.  Then all the documents go to the US Dept. of State in DC and then to the Ethiopia Embassy in DC.  A courier will deliver from one building to the other and charge us $75.  Then our dossier will be on its way to Ethiopia!
My timeline to send things to the Secretary of State level is the first week in February.  This depends on if all paperwork is in our hands by then (from FBI and USCIS).

We will then have a wait time of 6 months before a referral.

While we are waiting we will be applying for some adoption grants and doing some other fundraising to hopefully cover $20,000 (yikes!) But we serve a BIG God.  He has called us to international adoption and He will provide the means to do it.  Please be in prayer for us and if God leads you to support us we will possibly apply for a matching grant where an agency will match what donations we receive. 

1 comment:

Gretchen Magruder said...

Suzanne, we're so excited to see you move forward! You're right, our God is BIG and we've been amazed to see Him provide for our adoption. Just last week some friends wanted to have a fundraising dinner for us before we go, and we had to tell them NO!! God has provided everything we've needed to far!!

Praying things go smoothly with your dossier...what a relief to have that done!!