Yahoo!!

If it seems I have been behind in life during the past couple of months--it's because my life has been this... preparing our dossier.

To give you some idea of what internationally adopting parents go through and what a dossier entails...

• Family Profile
  
• Notarized letter to Ministry of Women's Affairs in Ethiopia
  
• 2 passport size photos of ea. parent
  
• Home Study Report (notarized and state certified)


• Agency license


• Power of Attorney (notarized and state certified)


• Certified Birth Certificates and Marriage Certificate of parents


• 2 notarized letters of recommendation


• Notarized police clearance for each parent


• Notarized medical certificates from Physician for each parent


• Notarized employers letter


• Notarized Tax returns


• Notarized declaration of personal condition


• Notarized letter from bank


• Notarized post-placement agreement.

This is a picture of the evening we received our last state certification letter.

The next morning I headed to the post office to mail a certifide package. This is what I wanted to write on it...

It is a little unnerving to hand over something like this...I cannot imagine how devastating it would be to have to start over if it were lost in the mail, BUT, thanks to God, today I received an email that read this:

"I just wanted to let you know that I received your dossier here in the Eugene office today, had a chance to review it and everything looks complete."

Hence, the title of my post today....."Yahoo!!!!"

We will now wait for our dossier to make it's way to Ethiopia, wait for our immigration approval, wait for a court date, wait for a travel date and...pray for continuation of divine help in financing. Hopefully, this process will be around 4 months or less....."Yahoo!!!!"

Brown Like Me

Newsflash: We are adopting a black son.

Bigger Newsflash: We're not black.

Since this discovery, I have become extremely aware that if we are to have any black skinned toys or books with black characters in our house, I must become very intentional about it.

Julianna saved her money for several weeks in order to buy a t-shirt with the princess of the Princess and the Frog on it. She was excited because she loves the princess and I was excited because finally there is a black Disney princess! Isn't it about time?

For valentines day, we bought Julianna a black fairy (which she loves). We want her to have some diversity in the dolls that she plays with. We need diversity to be normal in our house! If you walk into the toy section in any given store in Sioux City there are 20 white figures for every black, if any at all. I suppose this is just due to the demographic in this area, but it makes it hard to prepare toys that our son will relate to.

How terrible would it be to live somewhere where you never saw anyone that looked like you? Would you feel like an outsider? Would you have a hard time feeling that you were beautiful and accepted?

Here is our current doll census:


Two is progress right?

We are also expanding our book library.

I am extremely excited to add to our family in this way. I'll admit I am nervous about how we are going to handle the trials our son will face because of his color. I will also admit that I am confident in God's guidance and will be asking him for help along the way. God is an artist and the mixture of the tones of our skin is a beautiful thing, especially within a family.

"Pardon me, your epidermis is showing, sir....

A piece of canvas is only the beginning

It takes on character with every loving stroke.

This thing of beauty is the passion of an artists heart"

--Colored People, Dc Talk

Moving Forward

Well, our home-study is complete today. It is being sent for a final once over and then we will wait for our copy. Here is our social worker, Nikki, who was so efficient in getting this done quickly...she is also in a hurry to get our little guy home.

Once we receive our completed, notarized copies of the home study we will send one to the State of Iowa to be certified and one to Immigration Services to go along with the application for adoption of an international orphan we sent this week. After they receive this, we will be fingerprinted...AGAIN, and then receive our approval. Our next immigration paperwork will be done while we are in Ethiopia! After our homestudy is certified by the State of Iowa, it will be the final piece in our Dossier (a stack of papers and documents all about us sent to Ehtiopian gov't). When our Dossier makes it's way to Ethiopia we will be waiting for a court date... I will blog about this later.

What else are we doing in the mean time?






Jesus, please lift up our little boy today. Make his heart happy and ready to be loved. Make the space between us small as you give us favor in the courts, as you provide for this adoption financially, and as our love for him and our faith in You grows.

December Activities

We have accomplished a few things on our adoption to do list during the month of December. Even in the middle of preparing for the holiday, we are in a rush to complete hurdles because the thought that our son will celebrate with us next Christmas puts excitement in our heart!
We attended a required course for Parents in Progress in Omaha the first weekend in December. Here we met with three other adoptive families--two for China and one for Ethiopia.
It was great to have conversations about our fears and hopes for the adoption process with each other and to be able to ask questions to the Holt staff. The director in Omaha was actually leaving for a trip to Ethiopia a few days after our class. We are sure that she saw our little boy!


During the month, Micah and I filled out our 16 page questionnaires. We also had our health papers completed. Micah, thankfully, had just been HIV tested for life-insurance and so his doctor said that was good enough for him to sign off on. I, on the other hand, had to send my blood away to be tested.
...the results are still out.

Julianna was my photographer here--what a steady hand!

The lab tech also, thankfully, had a steady hand.

We are so thankful for the Dr.'s office and Dr. for being so kind and patient with all of the paperwork we pushed their way!

We are excited for next Christmas when our boy will come claim the puppy under the tree that Julianna is taking care of for him in the mean time.

Last Wednesday, we received an unexpected (wonderful) surprise. The FedEx truck came to our house delivering a cardboard envelope holding something we will treasure forever. Inside was a DVD with live footage of our future son!!
We had no idea when/if we would get any more information about him and certainly were not expecting it this soon! Seeing him play and clap to music was amazing and I knew that I was in love with this little boy! The video cleared up a lot of unknowns in my mind. I saw what he really looked like (quite a bit different than the little blurry picture we saw when we chose him) and let me say, he is even more of a cutie than I thought! We saw him observe the children around him and really seem to be thinking deeply about his new surroundings at the intake center. We saw him build with blocks and share with another child. We also saw him eat big spoonfuls of food and watch a beautiful smile come across his face.
Next weekend we are spending two days in Omaha participating in classes about international adoption and the adjustments we will need to prepare for. We are now more excited than ever and still beg you to pray for an efficient flow of paper work and task completion so this process can move quickly!

"All children are beautiful when they are loved."---Bertha Holt

We have chosen to adopt through an agency called Holt International. This is a national agency with a main office in Eugene, Oregon and branch offices all over the country. Our home study is being done in the Omaha branch. The experience we have had with this agency so far has been phenomenal! It is so evident that they are committed to putting children into families and have the process streamlined. They are incredibly efficient and helpful.
The founders of Holt are Harry and Bertha Holt, who decided to adopt 8 Korean children back in the 1950's. They quickly found out that international adoption would be impossible unless Congress would pass a special law allowing it. This couple, believing that God wants His children to care for those without families, championed this law and brought their 8 children home. A few years later, Holt Internat'l was incorporated and since have put 40,000 children into homes in the U.S.
One of the things that Micah & I love about Holt is that they have staff abroad as well as domestically. The children who are put into Holt's care in other countries, are considered individually and only when there is no other option than international adoption are they placed with U.S. families. The children being placed in homes are never put up for adoption due to poverty alone--otherwise our money would be better spent providing for the family instead of taking the child away to a different country. In order to be placed in the program, the children have lost one or both parents, are homeless, or have been abandoned. Holt offers assistance and counseling to the birth families if possible. Of course, it is best for a child to stay with their birth families and to stay within their culture, so it is good to know that our son's unique circumstances were considered and being placed up for adoption was absolutely the best option for him. We are also incredibly thankful that he is in good care during the time we will be waiting to go get him!
If you are the least bit interested in adopting a child who needs a home check out www.holtinternational.org.

First Steps

Even though Micah and I have been licensed with a home study to adopt in the U.S. we will need to do a "do over" in order to make a home study specific for Ethiopia. A bummer in the way of time and money, but we want to make sure everything we do sets us up for success in the Ethiopian courts.

This last week, we began to work through a large pile of paperwork (the first of many large piles). It seems to be going faster this time because we are familiar with the process now and already have many of the documents that will be required.

Just like we did last year, all of the adults in our home had to go to the county jail and get fingerprinting done for our background checks.



It is good to have started this process as it takes 6-9 weeks to get a clearing from the FBI. This will be the longest part of the home study. Hopefully, we will have everything else completed by the time these are cleared.

Last Thursday, we all got inked, all of our papers got notarized, and we headed to the post office.


Good-bye stack of papers, soon someone special will make you seem very worth it!