Flying Over the Atlantic!

We got an email yesterday (Friday, Nov. 7th) letting us know our dossier had been authenticated and was loaded with some other dossiers and FedEx was hauling the "box o' important papers" to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia! We had just mailed it a week ago and it's already on it's way! Needless to say we're very excited.

The wait time appears to be anywhere from 5 months (for a sibling group, which we're open to) to 10 months (for a toddler girl). So, we could travel to Africa as early as April or as late as September. Either way, I'm sure the time will pass quickly. We're looking forward to the day when we get word of a referral and get to see the picture or pictures! See, here's the little secret...we're actually praying that we could have a sibling group (one boy and one girl) so hopefully it will be sooner than later! But, we know it's God's choice, but He said to ask...

So, for now we wait and schedule our shots and load up on malaria meds! Thanks for your continued prayers.

- Dave

Out of Our Hands

We drove an hour to Lincoln yesterday and got our dossier certified. Today it is safely in Virginia at our adoption agency. We got word from our family coordinator that it will be reviewed, certified and authenticated, then shipped to Ethiopia within the next two weeks. It's so nice to have our part of the paperwork completed (assuming there is nothing they will discover that we forgot or did wrong). Until next time...

Gina

USCIS Approved...Still

On Thursday we got the call that the government had approved us for adoption in Ethiopia (being approved to adopt from Ukraine wasn't good enough), so we went to get the document Friday. Waiting for this has been stressful because Friday also marked the last day that our one-free-renewal of this document would be allowed. We would have been charged somewhere in the $1000 range for a new one.

We hope to be sending all our paperwork to America World in the next day or so. Soon after that, if everything looks okay, they'll send it on to the US embassy.

We'll keep you posted!

Gina

Hear that?

Prrrrt. Prrrrt. Prrrrt.
That's the sound of crickets chirping as we are STILL waiting for the US government to send our last document.

You can always count on friends...to mess up your adoption

So we needed three reference letters to put with our dossier. Just to let you know the kind of people we choose to hang around with, I thought I'd let you see the letter we got from some good friends:

Ministry of Child Acquisition
Re: David and Gina Holland

To Whom It May Concern:

This letter is written to you at the behest of our recent acquaintances David and Gina Holland. They asked us to provide a reference for their adoption process.

We first met the Hollands at a wine tasting and séance they hosted at an out building on their property...

Since their daughter was away at a work camp we didn’t see much of her at first. As we later learned, she is quite industrious and likes to sew small beaded cloth goods en masse. In fact, there is an entire room of the Hollands’ house filled with sewing machines where Davi and her friends sew for hours on end every day.

That is how the subject of adoption first came up. The Hollands mentioned that they needed more help around the house and how nice it would be to have a few more hands available.

As far as their fitness to parent is concerned, their assigned case worker at Child Services is probably more capable to address that since she meets with them regularly. Her number may be attached to another of the documents you received from them. However, Dave said there were many documents you didn’t need to concern yourselves with so he, helpful as always, shredded them to reduce the volume of paperwork.

I hope you find the above helpful.

Sincerely,
Jim and Daria Givaletis

If you attend our church, you can probably figure out who "Jim and Daria Givaletis" are. If the fake name doesn't give it away, the humor will.

It was kind of the "Givaletis'" to also give us another letter that is a little more supportive and helpful.

Gina

One More Paper!

We are waiting for one more paper and then we're done with the dossier! The down side of the whole deal is that the one paper is a document we need from the federal government so it could be a few weeks. But, it's still one paper nonetheless! So, when that comes in we'll get everything authenticated and ship the dossier off to our agency and they'll take it from there. Once the document is sent, our projected wait time is supposed to be 7-9 months. That will plop us right in the middle of summer so our daughter won't have to miss any school (not that it would have been a huge deal anyway b/c we'll only be gone a couple weeks)!

Now to switch gears and get all the required shots to head to that neck of the woods. I think Typhoid is in there, Hepatitis B, and since none of us have had our Yellow Fever booster lately, that one will probably be on the docket as well.

Hopefully the next post is news that the dossier has been sent!

Dave

Hunting Down Papers

This past week we have made a much more intentional approach hunting down more papers for our dossier. After digging in we've discovered that Ethiopia is very good about making adoption a normal process! Building our file this time around seems much more logical and simple compared to round one dealing with eastern Europe. It's fairly reasonable to assume that we would have our dossier complete in the next 2-3 weeks before being reviewed by our agency and shipped off to Addis Ababa. Pray for us this week as we go in to update our medical form. This will be the third time doing this so our doc should be a pro by now. We are able to use our previous test results so we should not have to have another round of blood work! Whew...
Dave

Money Back!

We are so thankful. After several conversations among our facilitator in Ukraine, our adoption agency, and us, it was finally settled that our facilitator would return most of what we were told we would receive, and our agency made up the difference by applying the remaining balance to our Ethiopian program fees. We are so relieved to have the money and to have some closure with our attempted Ukraine adoption. Thanks to those of you who prayed for this situation. God has been generous.

So now we're moving forward with Ethiopia. It's hard to start everything all over again, but there really isn't much choice in the matter. We are hopeful, however, that this process will be smoother and less stressful. We've heard great things about Ethiopia adoption. Let's see.

Gina

Please Pray for Us

After we were advised by our family coordinator to pull out of the Ukraine program our facilitator in Ukraine said he would return a significant portion of our money back to us. Since then he has said he needs some time. He didn't say that he has already spent it, but this seems to be the case. He has committed to returning it during the first part of June. Please pray that he follows through and that we have wisdom on what to do next if he doesn't.

Thanks for your prayers.

They Let Us In...Again

We just got a call from our adoption agency letting us know we've been accepted into the Ethiopia program. We'll be getting a packet in the mail in the next few days so we can get started on the paperwork. Get started...that's funny.
Gina

New Template

There. That's better.

Back to Square One

And this begins our new journey--this time to Ethiopia.

David asked me why I picked such a boring template. There will likely be changes to the look of this blog soon. Anyone know where to get good, free templates?