The Never Ending Paperwork Process

My plan was to go to Springfield last week to get our documents certified so that we could send them to our agency but I was unable to. We have to fax our dossier documents to our agency for review before we can have them certified and unfortunately we are still waiting to hear back. I cannot go to Springfield until I know that all of our documents are ok and can be certified. In addition to this I just found out this week that one of the documents that we were told could be certified in IL cannot be so I had to overnight this document to Virginia and pray that they will certify it quickly and Fed-Ex the document to our agency hopefully within the next week. I do know that our agency only has one person right now working very hard for all of the families in the Ethiopia program. I just have to keep reminding myself that each of these small delays are just a result of God working on the little details of our baby that he has already chosen for us in Ethiopia. Right now our program coordinator is in Ethiopia and they are having several power outages because of the lack of rain that they have had which is causing a decrease in the amount of power that can be used. Because of these power outages many families have not been able to receive referrals and some families have had delays in court. We ask that you pray for the power to be restored and for us to receive the ok that we can have our documents certified and we can finally have the status of DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia).

Our Document Has Arrived

I have been very behind on posting lately but I wanted to let everyone know that our last document has finally arrived!!! We have to have everything approved by our agency and then I can take our documents to Springfield which I am hoping to do on Thursday or Friday to be certified. As soon as they are certified then I will Fedex them to our agency. This means that all of our documents will be in Ethiopia in just a few weeks and then our wait will begin. We will be counting Fridays again like we did when Travis was overseas-they seem to go so much faster!!!

One Down, One To Go

I got an exciting email on Friday from our caseworker letting me know that she received our DCFS foster care approval and would be mailing out our packet that day for us to send to USCIS. I was suprised to find our packet in our mail the next day. I plan to mail this today and hopefully we will just be waiting a couple of weeks to get our updated I171-H from the immigration department and once we receive this we can send everything off to Ethiopia. It is so exciting to be feeling this close again to having everything finished and out of our hands!!

Lots of Referrals!!

Three families in the Ethiopia program received referrals on March 26th. The ages of the children referred ranged from 6 months to 9 years old. The DTE (dossier to Ethiopia) dates for the new referrals were: Infant girl: 8/1/07 Sibling group of 5 & 7: 10/26/07 Sibling group of 6 & 9: 12/7/07 A total of nine children ranging from 1 month to 9 years were referred to families. This is such exciting news. Based on these referrals once we submit our paperwork we will be waiting around 7 to 9 months for our referral.

Another Family Traveling to Ethiopia

We are still busily working on paperwork. We are waiting for our agency to approve our homestudy and then this will be forwarded to DCFS for our foster care license and to the state dept. Once all of this is done we will be ready to send everything to Ethiopia. What a relief this will be when we get all of the paperwork completed. AWAA has another family traveling to Ethiopia today to pick up their little girl. She is just absolutely adorable and has tons of hair!!! Click on the link below to follow their journey:

1. The Steiger Clan

I ask that you pray for this family that is traveling to Ethiopia and also pray for all of the families that are so close to a referral that God will give them peace until they get "The Call."

Families Traveling Home From Ethiopia

I know that many of you wonder what it will be like when we travel to Ethiopia to get our precious little one. There are several famlies that have been in Ethiopia all week and are making their way home. I have attached links to their blogs so that you can view the wonderful pictures that they have posted of their journey. The Harpolds The McIlraths The Treadwells The Wegners It is so neat to see all these pictures and read about the journeys realizing that someday that would be us. We ask that you pray for these families as they are traveling home.

My Daily Devotion

I wanted to share with you this awesome story out of my daily devotional Bible that I read last night. I have to thank my dear husband who bought this for me a few years ago. It is talking about the walled city of Jericho and as soon as I started reading the explanation of the verse I instantly thought of our adoption. The verse is Joshua 6:1-20 The Lord said "You shall march around the city, all you men of war; you shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days... But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets... All the people shall shout with a great shout; then the wall of the city will fall down flat..." This is how my devotion reads: "Sometimes God asks us to have that same faith. We face walls circumstances we can't conquer and God tells us that we will be victorious. But then all He asks us to do is walk just trust Him with the details, and keep on walking. Even when we don't understand God's purposes. Even when we can't see the point. Even when we'd rather discuss the matter or file a few grievances first. God just asks us to have enough faith to keep on walking. The victory will be his." This spoke straight to my heart regarding the road we are traveling on to bring our dear Olivia home.