Not the best news

The USCIS refused to expedite our immigration approval onto the National Visa Center however they did go ahead and finish it at their office today. They will be mailing their approval via snail mail to us and the NVC on the east coast (hopefully, they mailed it out today). The NVC will take up to a week to get everything set for J to get his visa in Ethiopia so he can come home. Once we have that approval letter in our hand we need to fax it onto the national BCS office and it's up to them whether or not they will proceed to get us an embassy appointment set without knowing for sure the National Visa Center is done. The risk is that we could end up in Ethiopia waiting on them to approve us and get J his visa home. At this point, Dave and I are willing to take that risk knowing that they only need about a week and if we get a embassy date set it may not be for two weeks. Anyway, now we wait for this letter to come in the mail. If they sent it today from the other side of the mountains there's a chance we could get it tomorrow but then with the holiday on Monday, BCS won't touch it until Tuesday. Please say a prayer that things will move quickly after the weekend. We're ready to go. . .

Another update

Just talked to Dave and he said that the woman at a congressman's office said that USCIS is waiting on a new copy of the home study that shows we can adopt an older child. Bonnie with our agency said she over-nighted it over a week ago. Yet, They don't have it. So, Bonnie emailed them a copy of it today but it's not a signed copy. So, to cover our bases Dave called the CO branch of BCS to get them to fax a signed copy. I am hopeful that things could be moving along quickly by tomorrow. This is exciting and nerve wracking and overwhelming. I think the Lord's really been in this because I wonder how long USCIS would have waited for the home study copy that BCS supposedly sent. It's a good thing Dave called the congressman's office!

the delay update

As you know, our adoption agency submitted our request with USCIS later then they should have. We just got this email from our contact with our agency.

I did everything I could last week - and you did your part. They (US Citizen Immigration Services)do not process Orphan Cases every day. They have certain days set aside for Orphan Processing. They also do not usually notify me when a they complete something for a family. I did request that they do notify me. You will probably know of your approval first. You will receive it in the mail. Your I-171H is current, it just does not show approval for an older child.
You will receive a revised I-171H showing the extended age.

Families traveling

Three BCS families got their embassy dates for January 21st. Two of them are leaving on the 15th and one on the 18th. The crazy thing is that they only found out a few days ago. The two families who are leaving on the 15th found out 8 days before they are leaving. It happens so fast!! I am very excited for them all!! Pray for them to have safe travels.

We could be next. . .

Reason for delay

It's our agency's fault and I am trying not to be angry. We had to get re-approved by USCIS to adopt an older child then we originally requested. We just got an email today from our agency asking us to write a letter to USCIS begging them to expedite our approval so we can still travel this month. There was a lack of communication within the CO and IA branches of our agency and it sounds like we've been waiting for 3 weeks for nothing. UGH!

Life Book & Video Documentary

This is a note from our agency. It's very exciting and I am thrilled they're doing it. It raises our country fees by $1000 but it's worth it.

We reached an agreement with a local partner-agency in Ethiopia that will do life books and video documentaries for the children that we place in our families. The agency does a professional job. They have a large crew of more than 14 professionals including lawyers, social workers and journalist who travel to distant places to investigate the life story and background information for each child. The investigators travel to different regions from where the children come, to find out the circumstances that led to the death of parent/s or relinquishment of the child; hear from the persons who decided to relinquish the child for residential care with orphan centers and other circumstances surrounding the child’s orphan status and origins. When they are satisfied that all the pieces are together, they will then produce a life book and video documentary for the child. The life book and documentary video will be given to the family when the travel to Ethiopia to finalize their adoption process.

6 weeks

We sent our dossier off to the Bethany Iowa branch 6 weeks ago. A couple days ago they informed us that it was sent to WA DC for authentication. There was a couple things that had to be re-done due to things changing on the agency's end but most of this time we've spent waiting and wondering what the status of our dossier is. So, after all this time it's still not in Ethiopia. There's nothing we can do but patience is wearing thin.

The last we heard 55 couples working with BCS were waiting for children from Ethiopia. Today we received an email that was good to hear.

What a month June has been! 13 (16 children) families will have or already had court dates. We're thankful for a smooth court process this month for so many families. Three families are already home, and five more are due to travel. With successful court dates, additional travel dates should be coming.

Families waiting the longest had their dossiers sent in July 2008, with these families having a preference for younger, female children.

Info from Bethany Christian Services blog

This past week two cases have come out of court approved, four families have returned home with five children, and six children were matched with five families!

Bethany has about 55 families with dossiers in Ethiopia. Families with dossiers sent in late July 2008 are waiting the longest. About one fourth of these families are open to or only wanting a sibling group, about one fourth of the families have a preference for a female children as young as possible. Other families who are waiting are open to either gender in various age ranges.

We are thankful for all of the families who are preparing their heart and home for their children for Ethiopia.

I have to admit that reading this kind of made me a little sad. There are families waiting since last July! With a fourth of the families wanting a girl it makes me feel fairly confident we will have a boy. :-) I am SOO ok with that.

Home Study begins on Oct. 8th

The lady who worked for the local Bethany branch moved and I assume no one has filled her spot. We were excited to have a local contact with Bethany and that's part of the reason we chose them. So, it's a bit disappointing that we can't work with Deone. Anyway, We got a call today from a social worker. She was contacted by Bethany but does not work for Bethany. She seemed very nice on the phone which was a relief. For some reason I had a picture in my head of what social workers would be like if they weren't working for a Christian company. I think Kendra will be good though (from what I felt through our phone call conversation). She said the state requires she have four meetings with us. Two will be with us as a couple and the other two meetings will be one on ones with only Dave or myself and Kendra. We set up the first meeting for Oct. 8th. I am excited and nervous. It'll be so nice to get it moving though.

Oh,it's not set in stone yet but we most likely will be changing our child's age preference to 1 year or younger instead of 2 or under. We heard that 4 families recently got referrals for 4 baby boys all under 5 months. I asked about the wait time and was told that it doesn't seem the wait for younger kids is any longer.

Such exciting news!

So, Ethiopia is a fairly new program for Bethany Christian Services. I think they've only been doing it for close to a year. Anyway, we just got this email which I thought was SOO exciting!!

Hi All!!

Have you read the Ethiopia Blog?? http://www.bethany.org/blogs/ethiopiablog.nsf If you have, you would see that we received four referrals last week!! To say that we are thrilled for the families and children is an understatement. Four healthy baby boys, all under 5 months old were matched for their forever families. We pray for their health and care as they are in the Bethany transition home awaiting their adoption processing.

Another note of celebration is that we've had 8 children join their forever families (6 families), and one more forever family will be joined this week! What a joy it has been to see the program continue to blossom and children be blessed!


Thank you Father for Your blessings for the children and families we are able to serve in our Ethiopia Program.
Alison Adema
Bethany Christian Services
Program Coordinator for:
Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Korea, Philippines

Paperwork

YEA!! Here's an email we just received:

i have permission from the National Bethany office to begin your adoption process in the Ethiopia program. I will send you the first paperwork by mail on Monday and also email you some of the documents.

However, she also said:

The National office stated the person matching you to a child in Ethiopia may feel your youngest child is too young and match someone else before your family, so you might wait a little longer if there are many families waiting - but maybe not.

Oh well. We understand their point of view on Gabriel's age. The good thing is that we won't *hear* about them skipping us and going to the next family on the list. We will just have to wait a little longer without really know we are.

Ethiopia Here We Come!

So, we met with Deon from Bethany this morning. Ethiopia it is!!! Yea, we now know for sure which country we are going with. Korea and Russia both had some red flags, things we might be able to get around but could be quite a head ache and even possibly backfire on us. Ethiopia was completely clear. So . . .Deon is double checking on the requirements for the youngest child's age (being 6 months) at application time. She wasn't sure and didn't know if this other lady at the national office was *recommending* it or if it was a real *rule*. If we can't submit the application until Gabriel is 6 months old she figured we could at least start the paperwork for it and have it read for the day he's 6 months old. She is contacting Bonnie to find out for sure and will call us back. Most likely we will be able to meet with Deon again to get the paperwork and start collecting all the other things we need. I will update when I know more.

Edited to Add: I just got an email from Bonnie asking us to call her. I called and we talked about Gabriel's age. The biggest concern is that is if the process goes as quickly as it 1 year or less are we ready and mentally prepared to have another baby in the house. I said, "Yes!" We know this is God's timing for us. So, she is going to talk to the people who work with Ethiopia and tell them she's spoken with us, the local social worker has spoken with us and we feel that we're ready. If they say "ok" then she will send us the formal application paper work right away. YEA!

Bethany Appointment

Thursday July 31st at 10AM MT. We are meeting with someone from Bethany to have our "information meeting" which is one of the steps we must take. It will be good to ask all our questions. We should really know where we stand by then. The lady left a message on my cell today saying we qualified for Ethiopia and then for two other countries but those two bring up concerns. So, I still think Ethiopia might end up being the country we choose. I am so excited to finally talk to someone. So, I should have a newsy update the end of next week.

I am so nervous!

We just got an email saying the National Bethany Office reviewed our preliminary application and they have sent it on to the local Grand Junction office. The email said that our local Bethany office would call us within the next TWO days to talk to us about our application. I am SOOO nervous that they will say, "Sorry you don't qualify for any country." Chances are low that would happen but I can't help but think that will happen. So, we're still on vacation in WA and leaving the morning after tomorrow to head to CA to visit friends. I wonder if they will call us while we're on the drive down there.

We haven't told our friends Joah and Michelle (the friends we're going to visit) about our adoption plans yet. But if we find out we qualify through a call on the drive there we will probably share the news. There are a lot of people who know we *want* to some day adopt, a handful of people who know we are actualy *going to* pursue this and even fewer who know we have officially *started* to pursue it. We didn't want to share it with too many people incase it ends up not working out. It would be too hard to have to answer a million questions if the Lord decides to shut this door. Once we know we qualify for a country and can submit the formal application we will most likely be shouting it from the roof tops. :-)

slight delay

A possible concern about our time frame was brought to our attention so we looked into it. A distent friend on a message board asked me (Kami) if we had to wait to apply until Gabriel was a year old. Wow, I hadn't thought of that. So, I emailed someone at Bethany and this is the email we got today:

"If you have already completed the preapplication on our website, that is fine. If not, please wait to apply until your child is 6-months old, per the program coordinator. "

Gabriel will be 4 1/2 months old by the time we can meet with someone from Bethany. It's a little air out of our balloon but I am trying to see the good in having to wait another month and a half. First is that I am thankful that we didn't start this months ago and have to wait even longer. Second is that we now have 6 weeks to raise/earn $550 to pay for the application and possibly not have to put it on a credit card or get a loan. I don't even know if Bethany would take a card. I know eventually we'll have to get a loan or something to pay for some of the fees (I think there is another $3000.00 + fee that is due soon after applying). We will have to fund raise and save to pay the loan off. We are optimistic hearing that one family raised every penny to pay for their adoption from Ethiopia.

There is a possibility that Dave and I might get the custodian position at our church and could save some of that to pay the adoption fees. Also, Dave will Lord willing be done with his Masters this year and there is a chance he can teach at the Grand Junction branch of CO. Christian College which would really help. So, we're just praying about that right now.