We are officially "waiting"....wait, I think we have been waiting, but now it's official.  What?

Our papers have officially been sent to Ethiopia as of yesterday!  So our status is officially "waiting for referral!"  WOW!  Now we don't hear anything until we get a  call from Bethany saying "We have a referral for you!"

Wait time is a huge guessing game...likely 6-24 months.  So now we need your prayers as we wait.  Pray for patience for us and for health and provisions for our future children and their caregivers.  Pray for God to prepare the hearts of Abigail and Benjamin to be amazing siblings to these precious children.  Pray for Chad and I to be prepared for the challenges (and joys!) of parenting a multi-cultural family!

So yes, now we wait... but more importantly we pray, we prepare and we wait on the Lord!

We have received word that our papers were sent to Washington DC on June 11th.  The papers  will be "Authenticated" and then sent back to GR, before they head on to Ethiopia!  I am still hopeful that our papers will be in route to Ethiopia by late June:)  We'll post again when we get word of that!

When you start the adoption process you are told to expect changes and we have just had our first (maybe of many, hopefully of few). Yesterday, we got an email that told us that due to a change within Bethany, we would have to re-do a couple of pieces of our dossier.  So yesterday we got our new papers printed, signed and notarized, then it was off to the Office of the Great State Seal in GR.  After 35 minutes of waiting, $4 fee, and 10 minutes in the mall play area to keep the children sane, it was back on the road to Bethany's Corporate office in GR. 

And even though a change like this may seem bothersome, we find it a time to thank God.  I believe if we would have turned in our paperwork a month ago, our papers would have gone to Washington DC to get Authenticated (and we'd pay the $400 fee) and then when this change came around, we would have had to redo them like I did yesterday and then have them Authenticated (is that a word?) again and I'm assuming with more fees.  So this timing of the change probably caused no delays and probably saved us some money...Praise God on both accounts!

So now we continue to wait to hear that our papers are on their way to D.C.  Then hopefully some time this month they will fly over the ocean to their new home in Ethiopia!

After watching the mailbox since our out-of-state documents headed back to the states they came from...our time of watching is over!

Our final two documents came this weekend - one from California on Friday and one from Illinois on Saturday!  We made our final copies and our dossier packet is assembled and ready to go!  We'll be able to drop it off in Grand Rapids on Tuesday morning! 

After submitting, we just wait to hear that the paperwork made it safely to Ethiopia.  That is when the big wait begins!  We'll update as soon as the paperwork arrives!

 

Our dossier is closer to being finished but we hit a couple small bumps in the road today.  We got everything notarized and together to get the "Great State Seal".  After driving to GR and waiting for 25-30 minutes, I found out something I probably should have realized.....documents from out of state need to be sealed out of state.  I was born in IL and my birth certificate needs to be State sealed in IL.  This makes sense...I just didn't think about it before today.  It was a little funny cause the lady in GR looked at me like I was stupid and said "I can't seal documents from California and Illinois"...opps! 

So we sent Chad's employer letter back to CA to get sealed....that's going to be one expensive document by the time all is said and done.  It was $20 for the notary...$25 to have it overnighted here...(at this point we realize it needs to go back to CA....oh well) $20 to the Secretary of state to have a State seal (this verifies that the notary is who they say they are)...and $10 to have it sent priority mail there (CA) and back.  So now we wait again.  It's a race between IL and CA... who will get our documents back sooner?  We'll be praying for them to come quickly so we can stop waiting on the dossier phase to be finialized...

California says it averages 2 weeks for the documents to be authenticated....we'll pray it goes quicker!  So even though I'm a little disappointed not to have our dossier at Bethany's Corporate office, I'm still so thankful God has moved all our paperwork along quickly....we're still way ahead of schedule..praise God!