Updates and News!
Our Dear Friends and Family,
Happy New Year! We pray you had a wonderful holiday season filled with family, friends, food and laughter!
We apologize for the delay in posts! Our fall leading up to the holidays was very busy, but we have been diligently working on our paperwork! With that said, we are happy to announce that almost all of our paperwork is complete! Here's the low down:
1) Home Study - At this time we are in the final review of our home study. It has already been reviewed by 3 people at our home study agency and was just sent to our referring agency for their review and comments. When that is complete it will be finalized by our home study agency and then sent to our state department for authentication.
2) Dossier - The dossier paperwork on our end is complete and has been reviewed for errors. We are still waiting on a few items from our home study agency to submit to our referring agency, but we are almost there. Once our home study is authenticated it will be sent to our referring agency to add to our dossier.
3) USCIS Clearance - Once our home study is complete we will send a copy to USCIS with our immigration form (which is essentially our petition for adoption). At this stage we will also need to be fingerprinted one more time before final approval. After the home study and form is reviewed, and we are cleared by our fingerprints, it will be sent back to us with a notification of approval.
4) Once all of these steps are complete, our dossier (which includes an authenticated original of our home study) will be sent to our lawyer in Uganda. His office will then review the paperwork and submit it to the Ugandan courts. At which point we will be waiting to get assigned a court date to go get our kiddos!
In other news, it is with great joy that we let you know that we received our referral!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In adoption talk, that means we got matched with our children!!!!!
At this time we are unable to share a lot of details, and we ask that all information shared on this blog remain confidential. We also ask that no information be shared through social media (Facebook) for the protection of our adoption.
Now that the boring stuff has been said, on to the exciting news!
We have been matched with 2 boys!! They are "bonded siblings" which means they have grown up together since they were very little and know of each other only as brothers. Because they are so close, our orphanage has agreed to only adopt them together, which makes us very happy! They are both 3 years old (5 months apart!), which gave us initial hesitation, as we did not expect twins!
When we first received word of our referral, we were concerned with the closeness of their age due to the education we had received from other families who have adopted. We asked our orphanage director if we could take a few days and pray about the boys before we made a final decision. She agreed and asked that we give her a decision in 3-5 days time.
For the next 3 days, Paul and I fasted and prayed and asked God specifically for a "no" if these were not to be our children. Well after our 3 days were up, neither of us had heard anything. Well if you know me (Bettina) at all, I am not one to move forward without being 100% certain. With that said, that evening I went to bed and asked God to give me a dream, a vision, a word, or anything to show me these were our boys! Let's just say God kept His end of the deal! That evening I went to bed and I dreamed of the boys in our house, then I dreamed of them as teenagers and then I dreamed of them as adults. It was incredible :) So needless to say, the next morning I told Paul my answer and we immediately notified our orphanage that we wanted to officially accept our referral!!
Since that time, life has flown by! We have been planning and dreaming and preparing for these 2 little ones to join our family this year! At this point we still don't have a firm timeline for travel, but we are expecting to head to Uganda this summer. Once our paperwork is submitted to Uganda, we should have a better time frame, but it is still very up in the air. We will be sure to keep you all posted!
While this is a very exciting time for both of us, we still have a lot of preparation and prayer ahead of us. Even though the paperwork and social worker visits were stressful and invasive and time consuming, it will not compare to what we will be up against while in country. At this time they are estimating we will be in Uganda for 6-12 weeks in order to get all of the documentation completed in order to bring the boys home to the United States. Let me break it down for you (roughly):
Step 1: Arrive and meet our children!
Step 2: Attend court for child 1 - wait for written approval from the judge
Step 3: Attend court for child 2 - wait for written approval from the judge
Step 4: Go to the passport office to apply for the boys' passports - wait for their passports to be completed (I've heard a range of 4 days to 7 weeks! yikes!)
Step 5: Once we receive their passports we can take them to get medical exams
Step 6: Go back to the medical office 3 days later for their Tb test to get read - wait for them to send the results to the US Embassy
Step 7: Make a "document check" appointment at the US Embassy - attend and fill out/revise any paperwork needed
Step 8: Make a VISA appointment for the boys at the Embassy to be approved for their US Visas (Still unsure if this will have to be done in 2 appointments)
Step 9: Come home!!!!!!!!!!
As you can see there is a lot that needs to be done, and unfortunately there is no rhyme or reason to time frame. We are believing for a quick process, with no set backs, delays or additional requests needed. Please join with us in praying for a good judge, a quick retrieval of our written court ruling, and a quick passport process. If these things are completed in a reasonable time frame, it will cut down our time in country significantly. Thank you in advance for your prayers and support!
Until that time, we are planning to get their room ready and try to learn how to parent two 3 year olds! :) We got some outfits from our family over the holidays and it's been exciting to start shopping for them little by little!
On the financial side of things, we are continuing to thank God for His provision. We needed another $7,500 dollars by the end of the January and we are blessed to say we have that in our account ready to submit! Up to this point, all of our needs have been met at every deadline, but we still have about $20,000 left to raise. Our next large submission will be a month before we travel to Uganda, and the rest will be needed while we are in country. We are praying that Paul will be able to stay for the whole time we are there (it would only be for financial reasons he would need to come home). We are concerned with the thought of paying our mortgage, paying rent and food in Uganda and adding 2 little ones, but we KNOW God will provide. He has been SO faithful to us every step of the way and this will be no exception.
If you're interested in donating we still have a tax deductible option through Project Hopeful. You can access our link here: http://www.
We also still have our paypal account that can be accessed on the home page of our blog.
We are planning to do a few more fundraisers this Spring, but are still trying to determine what they will be. We will keep you posted!
Wow, that was a lot!!
We can't thank all of you enough for your continued prayers, support and financial contributions. We could not do this without the love and support of our friends, family, co-workers and community, and we are beyond blessed at the outpouring of love we've received.
We hope you continue to follow along on our journey and we will be sure to keep you apprised of updates!
Here's to a great 2015! We love yous!