Monday, March 16, 2009
Fingerprint Appointment
Wow that was quick. We just received our immigration fingerprinting appointment! It's only two weeks away! This may move faster than I thought...
Sunday, March 15, 2009
What's next?
I've been asked by several people what comes next. We are currently waiting on our immigration approval (the I-171H) which should take three months or so. Our homestudy had to be corrected and resubmitted to immigration last week so that set us back once again. We are now waiting to get our fingerprinting appointment with USCIS. Hopefully we won't have any more setbacks in obtaining our approval.
After we receive the I-171H we will take all of our dossier documents to the Secretary of State to be authenticated. Our completed dossier will then be rushed to Gladney and from there it will be sent on to the U.S. Dept of State to be authenticated and then to the Ethiopia Embassy for the final authentication. From the Embassy it will be forwarded to Ethiopia. Finally at this point we will be put on a waiting list for a referral of a child. Any questions?
After we receive the I-171H we will take all of our dossier documents to the Secretary of State to be authenticated. Our completed dossier will then be rushed to Gladney and from there it will be sent on to the U.S. Dept of State to be authenticated and then to the Ethiopia Embassy for the final authentication. From the Embassy it will be forwarded to Ethiopia. Finally at this point we will be put on a waiting list for a referral of a child. Any questions?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Progress!
We are now officially Gladney approved! After what seems like forever, things are finally moving along. Homestudy done, I-600A complete, and Gladney approved!
Friday, February 27, 2009
Immigration Approval Here We Come!
Finally an update! Our homestudy has been approved and sent off to USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services). That means our countdown to immigration approval begins. I stated in my second post that it could take up to six months; however, upon my most recent visit to the USCIS website I found out it is currently taking three months or less for processing times!! Yipee!!! Finally some good news. Now that the homestudy is finished, Gladney will look at our whole file and decide if we are officially approved to adopt through them. What a long process...
Speaking of long processes, in their monthly teleconference, Gladney stated the average wait for a referral is now 6.5 months, the timeframe to receive a court date is 1-3 months after referral, and then 12 weeks until the actual court date. Hopefully we will be on the waitlist for a referral in early June.
Speaking of long processes, in their monthly teleconference, Gladney stated the average wait for a referral is now 6.5 months, the timeframe to receive a court date is 1-3 months after referral, and then 12 weeks until the actual court date. Hopefully we will be on the waitlist for a referral in early June.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
AHOPE
AHOPE for Children is an organization that serves HIV positive orphans in Ethiopia. They have two children's homes in Addis Ababa that care for children that do not have family to care for them. Many of these children are now finding permanent homes through adoption. AHOPE also has a community outreach program that makes it possible for orphans to stay with their extended relatives and in their own communities by providing medical care, food, education, and more. Since we are adopting from Ethiopia, this issue is very close to our hearts. A t-shirt has been designed to bring awareness to this orphan crisis. Please join us. Your $10 donation for a shirt can feed a child at AHOPE for a week! The following is a post from the AHOPE blog:
There’s a movement growing. Everyday in the Western world someone’s eyes are opened to the orphan crisis that’s ravaging the developing countries. The problem seems so large and we seem so insignificant. We can make a difference though. By raising awareness we foster a community and as a community we can provide. We’re asking you to help us in creating that community.
World AIDS Orphan Day is May 7th. The AHOPE Store has developed a t-shirt to commemorate this day and the community of supporters that are growing year after year. Please join us in raising awareness. It’s simple. Order our newest t-shirt from the AHOPE Store for a $10 donation. (All proceeds go towards care of the children served by AHOPE.) Wear your shirt as often as possible, and especially on World AIDS Orphan Day. It will serve as a reminder to your community. It may even create a dialogue. That dialogue could open someone’s eyes. You might inspire them to do more, give more. We are asking you to join us in creating a community that is committed to orphan care.
After seeing what one little t-shirt can do you might be inspired yourself. If that’s the case be sure to check out the World AIDS Orphan Day website. Here you can find further information on this grassroots campaign and how to organize an event in your area. The campaign was founded by FXB International in 2002 and continues to grow year after year.
The new t-shirts images, designed by 13-year-old Isaiah, are shown below:
To order your shirt, please visit www.ahopestore.org. For orders of 20 or more please contact Marissa Baker at store@ahopeforchildren.org. Thank you very much for your support of AHOPE!
There’s a movement growing. Everyday in the Western world someone’s eyes are opened to the orphan crisis that’s ravaging the developing countries. The problem seems so large and we seem so insignificant. We can make a difference though. By raising awareness we foster a community and as a community we can provide. We’re asking you to help us in creating that community.
World AIDS Orphan Day is May 7th. The AHOPE Store has developed a t-shirt to commemorate this day and the community of supporters that are growing year after year. Please join us in raising awareness. It’s simple. Order our newest t-shirt from the AHOPE Store for a $10 donation. (All proceeds go towards care of the children served by AHOPE.) Wear your shirt as often as possible, and especially on World AIDS Orphan Day. It will serve as a reminder to your community. It may even create a dialogue. That dialogue could open someone’s eyes. You might inspire them to do more, give more. We are asking you to join us in creating a community that is committed to orphan care.
After seeing what one little t-shirt can do you might be inspired yourself. If that’s the case be sure to check out the World AIDS Orphan Day website. Here you can find further information on this grassroots campaign and how to organize an event in your area. The campaign was founded by FXB International in 2002 and continues to grow year after year.
The new t-shirts images, designed by 13-year-old Isaiah, are shown below:
To order your shirt, please visit www.ahopestore.org. For orders of 20 or more please contact Marissa Baker at store@ahopeforchildren.org. Thank you very much for your support of AHOPE!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Story So Far...
For those of you who are interested: (for those who don't care just skip to the last paragraph to see where we stand as of now)
We have been thinking about adoption as a means to expand our family for a number of years now. We feel God had placed it on our hearts to provide a home and a family to children who have no family and no place to call home. Our journey into international adoption officially began last summer when we applied to an adoption agency. About a week after we sent in our application we were asked if we would be interested in a baby that was to be born in two months (actually on Travis' birthday)! It would be a domestic adoption of a biracial baby girl and they were asking all of their Ethiopia families if they were willing to think about adopting this little girl. So far no one was interested. We immediately said "Yes, we are very interested!". We hung up the phone and started to figure out how we could come up with $25,000 in one month. Our hearts were torn when we realized that this was not yet meant to be, but for a little while we felt like we had a daughter out there. Heartache #1.
After this first bump in the road we started working on our international dossier which is the collection of documents that will be reviewed by government officials, judges, orphanage directors, etc. in order to evaluate our ability to be good parents. In another post I may go into more detail on this process in order to vent a little frustration! We had our first homestudy visit in September. Towards the end of September we decided that it was in our best interest to switch to a different adoption agency even though that meant starting the whole process over from the beginning and extending our adoption timeline. Heartache #2.
In October we decided to switch to Gladney. Money wasn't rolling in as we had planned it would be and so we had to wait...and wait...and wait until what seemed like forever. Well six weeks certainly seems like forever when you think you have your timeline all figured out! I initially had this perfect timeline in my mind and I was naively thinking that we would have one of the very few smooth adoption experiences. Every day we were waiting and saving money I felt like precious time was slipping away from us, taking us further from being united with our daughter. Heartache #3.
At the end of November we were finally able to move forward and take the steps necessary to officially apply with our new agency. We also mailed out our I-600A to USCIS which is the paperwork needed to approve us to bring an orphan into the US. I figured that Iowa would have a pretty quick turnaround for the approval (the I-171H), afterall how many Iowans are there adopting internationally? It turns out I was very wrong! We learned that it could take possibly six months to get immigration approval!!! Six months, that's longer than our anticipated wait for a referral! We cannot even be put on a waiting list for a referral until we receive the I-171H. So much for my timeline... I am no longer making any predictions. Heartache #4.
Although all these setbacks are frustrating to say the least, I do believe that God has perfect timing and we will end up with the child or children that are meant to be ours. I am certainly learning much about patience.
As of now we are waiting for Gladney to approve our homestudy. Once our homestudy is approved we send it to USCIS to complete our I-600A. Then our wait for immigration approval officially begins. Once Gladney approves our homestudy and has the finalized copy they will look at our file and application and decide to approve us or not to adopt though their agency.
If you made it through this entire post I am impressed! Thanks for caring!
We have been thinking about adoption as a means to expand our family for a number of years now. We feel God had placed it on our hearts to provide a home and a family to children who have no family and no place to call home. Our journey into international adoption officially began last summer when we applied to an adoption agency. About a week after we sent in our application we were asked if we would be interested in a baby that was to be born in two months (actually on Travis' birthday)! It would be a domestic adoption of a biracial baby girl and they were asking all of their Ethiopia families if they were willing to think about adopting this little girl. So far no one was interested. We immediately said "Yes, we are very interested!". We hung up the phone and started to figure out how we could come up with $25,000 in one month. Our hearts were torn when we realized that this was not yet meant to be, but for a little while we felt like we had a daughter out there. Heartache #1.
After this first bump in the road we started working on our international dossier which is the collection of documents that will be reviewed by government officials, judges, orphanage directors, etc. in order to evaluate our ability to be good parents. In another post I may go into more detail on this process in order to vent a little frustration! We had our first homestudy visit in September. Towards the end of September we decided that it was in our best interest to switch to a different adoption agency even though that meant starting the whole process over from the beginning and extending our adoption timeline. Heartache #2.
In October we decided to switch to Gladney. Money wasn't rolling in as we had planned it would be and so we had to wait...and wait...and wait until what seemed like forever. Well six weeks certainly seems like forever when you think you have your timeline all figured out! I initially had this perfect timeline in my mind and I was naively thinking that we would have one of the very few smooth adoption experiences. Every day we were waiting and saving money I felt like precious time was slipping away from us, taking us further from being united with our daughter. Heartache #3.
At the end of November we were finally able to move forward and take the steps necessary to officially apply with our new agency. We also mailed out our I-600A to USCIS which is the paperwork needed to approve us to bring an orphan into the US. I figured that Iowa would have a pretty quick turnaround for the approval (the I-171H), afterall how many Iowans are there adopting internationally? It turns out I was very wrong! We learned that it could take possibly six months to get immigration approval!!! Six months, that's longer than our anticipated wait for a referral! We cannot even be put on a waiting list for a referral until we receive the I-171H. So much for my timeline... I am no longer making any predictions. Heartache #4.
Although all these setbacks are frustrating to say the least, I do believe that God has perfect timing and we will end up with the child or children that are meant to be ours. I am certainly learning much about patience.
As of now we are waiting for Gladney to approve our homestudy. Once our homestudy is approved we send it to USCIS to complete our I-600A. Then our wait for immigration approval officially begins. Once Gladney approves our homestudy and has the finalized copy they will look at our file and application and decide to approve us or not to adopt though their agency.
If you made it through this entire post I am impressed! Thanks for caring!
Hello Blog World!
We are finally starting a blog about our journey to bring our daughter home from Ethiopia. I have been enjoying so many other people's great blogs and have been procrastinating putting one together myself (mostly because I couldn't come up with a good blog name). We'll have to see where this goes. I make no promises to update frequently! We hope you enjoy following along with us through the roller coaster of international adoption.
Travis and I have been talking about adoption for a long time and finally found ourselves in a place where we can hopefully afford the outrageous sums of money needed for an international adoption. We are also trusting God will provide for this financial need as we feel He has lead us to the decision to adopt in the first place.
Travis and I have been talking about adoption for a long time and finally found ourselves in a place where we can hopefully afford the outrageous sums of money needed for an international adoption. We are also trusting God will provide for this financial need as we feel He has lead us to the decision to adopt in the first place.
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