One Step Forward....Two Steps Back

This whole process is enough to make a mamma crazy!  We got our dossier back from the Secretary of State this morning.  One of the documents was not notarized correctly.  It was a simple mistake and easy to fix but it means that we have to send it back to the Secretary again to get authenticated.  This means we have another week before we can send the completed dossier over to our adoption agency.

This may not seem like much time in the normal world but in the adoption world it is a bit heart breaking.  Think about how slowly the last week of pregnancy goes by and you will have an idea of how it feels to wait for a referral.  The difference is we don't have a due date. There is no gaurentee that our kids will get here in a certain time frame.  We have about another week waiting for the dossier, then a five day wait for it to get to our adoption agency, then a week wait to get it sent over to adoption avenues(the people who find us a referral.)  Then we really don't know how long it will take to get the referral.

It still seems like a long way to go.  We still have a huge amount of faith that this is all in God's perfect timing.  Knowing that truth....and living out that we know that truth are two very different things.  We want to praise God in this storm and find joy and these little hiccups.  Anyways....pray a quick return of that one document and for my attitude over the next few weeks.  I am.....frustrated.

Lifesong Update

I am still waiting to tell you guys the balance in the Lifesong account.  I will announce it at the beginning of November.  I can tell you that we are on a roll and are loving all the support we are getting.  We also still need a lot of money to complete this adoption so if God is putting it on your hearts to help us and you have not received a letter, please let me know and I will get one to you.

We have heard news that our church is going to match $1,000 more than they originally planned.  We have already paid the international fee for the second child so they decided to match more to help with the second child fees.  This means that they are matching a total of $4,000! Praise God!

On a very positive note, we send the dossier documents that needed to be re-done over to the Secretary of State today.  We are hoping to send it to our agency next week but I will let you know when it happens.  Please be praying that everything is correct with our documents and we can move forward.  We are feeling at peace with the hiccups that we have experienced and are exited to see what God has in store.

Encouragement

We have received so much encouragement in the last couple of days. We have had people call and text to make sure we were doing okay and see if we need anything.  We have had people donate to our Lifesong account.  We have had people leaving encouraging comments on Facebook   We are so blessed to have all of these friends and family supporting us through this process.

I was reading through the study that Gavin and I are doing in our small group and came across this PERFECT passage.

1 Corinthians 15:58
Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.

What an encouraging word from our Father in Heaven.  All we needed was some some supernatural encouragement and we feel refreshed and renewed.  Having to do this dossier over again is not a waste of time.  Its a time of growth and learning.  This gives us the opportunity to get to know the dossier document even better so that we can more effectively help other couples who will go through this process in the future. It gives us more time to prepare for the homecoming of our kids.  We may not think we need more time but God knows better than we do.  It gives us more time to enjoy our family of three...things are about to get very beautiful but also very hectic.

When I read blogs of people who have been waiting for a referral for over two years, I feel so blessed to be in the position we are in.  God took care of us when he lead us to A Love Beyond Borders.  He made it possible for us to get our kids much faster than we could if we would have stuck with our old agency.  He is taking care of us right now too.  We can not see what he is doing like we could when we were switching agencies but we know His promises are true.

Bad News....

I got a call today from our dossier coordinator.  She started the call with "I have some bad new and I am not sure how to tell you."  As you can imagine, my heart droped.  It felt like an eternity waiting for her to tell me the news.  My mind went wild imagining what it might be.  I even contemplated the idea that they were not going to let us adopt and all that work was for nothing.

It was not the worst news ever but it sure did break my heart.  A large portion of our dossier is going to need to be sent back to us for us to do over again.  Our notaries stamp expires in April of 2013.  Our agency needs the stamp to be good for at least 14 months.

This should have been caught when I e-mailed the dossier to our coordinator to check it over before sending it to the secretary of state.  But it wasn't.  The problem was not caught until now.  Now that we spent the money to have everything authenticated.  Now that we thought we were officially on the waiting list.  Now that we had breathed a breath of relief at having the dossier sent off.

I am feeling pretty overwhelmed today.  How am I going to wait another month or two to send in our dossier?  How am I then going to wait for our referral?  Then how will I wait to see their faces and hold them for the first time?  Then how will I wait to bring them home.  This whole process is so full of heartbreak, yet I know that is will be so beautiful in the end and I will hardly even be able to remember this part.

I feel like I am at the end of my rope although I know that God does not give me more than I can handle so I must have more.  I have had all day to process the information that I pretty much have to do our dossier over again and I still don't know how I feel.  I am not angry because that would just be sinful.  I am not even sad because what is the point.  I will just sit down at my computer and start over again.  I will re-type and print everything that I need to and get it notarized.  Then send it off to the secretary of state with a check that is far too large.  Then when we get it back we will make more copies and make a new disc for translation.

We will be praying for strength in this time and ask that you pray with us.  This time of waiting is hard enough without having to do papers that I spent the last eight months gathering over again.   I know that the news could have been a lot worse.  I know that we are still so very blessed to even be in this situation.  It is incredibly obvious to me that this IS God's timing.  He had our coordinator miss a very obvious mistake.  Through this whole process we have watched God hold us back from submitting our dossier.  We have watched him cause glitch after glitch to make sure we do not submit our dossier too soon.  We are completely trusting in his plan.  He IS working here!  It is not the way we saw him working in our little human minds but He is working.  He loves us and He loves our kids.  He WILL come through for us!

We have officially started the WAITING GAME.

I received a call from our new case manager this morning.  She was searching for some missing documents that were no big deal to get to her as well as letting us know that we have officially started this new season called waiting.  Haven't we already been waiting?  Well yes but this is different.  We are "paper ready" to receive our referral.  She gave us the timeline of 0-6 months.    My heart tells me it will not take six months to see their beautiful little faces.

She also informed me that she will be getting in contact with me at least once every two weeks. Praise God! This contact just to ensure us that she is still working on our case brings me peace.  We will also be able to get an idea of which families in the program have received their referrals and how many are still waiting in front of us.  She let me know that as of right now, there are three or four families waiting ahead of us.  I am not sure how quickly those families will get referrals but that is why it is so great that I will be in contact with our case manager.

As far as travel times go, our case worker told me that it is about 3-5 months from the time of referral to the time that we travel.  Then about 2-3 months after that, we pick up our kids.  Pray with us that especially these travel time lines will be shorter for our family.  I can't imagine knowing our kids and then waiting this long to have them home.  I can rest in the fact that it will all be in God's perfect timing.

Dossier Has Arrived!

In Washington that is.  I got confirmation that our dossier arrived at A Love Beyond Borders on Tuesday morning, exactly when FedEx said it would.  Our dossier coordinator is currently looking over it to make sure there are not problems(she assures me she wont find any).  Then she will send it off to be authenticated once again!  I guess now they are authenticating the Secretary of States signature.  This is one official document!  Then is will be translated into Amharic for Ethiopia.

I got word today that we are getting a new case manager.  It was a little bit of a surprise but I am really exited about it.  Our last case manager was really hard to get a hold of which does not fair well for my personality   It is hard enough waiting when we can communicate openly with the person who trying to find us kids.  It is really really hard waiting when we can not get a hold of that person.  Pray that this case manager is easier to get a hold of.

I put in an e-mail today about the travel timeline for going to Ethiopia.  My grandparents are planning to take the whole family to Disney Land in February and we really want to see when our case manager thinks we will be traveling to Ethiopia so we can prepare ourselves for either not going or going to Disney Land. So in a few days, I should have a pretty good idea of when we will be traveling!  I can not believe we are at the point in this process where we actually need to consider our Ethiopia travel timeline when making plans!

Surprise! Dossier sent!

I went to check the mail yesterday already in a great mood because I was on my way to run a very special errand and there was an envelope from The Secretary of State!  I opened it up and there was our document that we have been waiting for over a month!  I was so exited, I called Gavin right away hoping that he would be home in time to take pictures with it and bring it to FedEx.  I could have brought it in the morning but I wanted Gavin to be there.  He would be home in time:)  I ran my errand and got home to make sure everything was in order.  I had to go make a few copies of the new document at Office Max and make a disk of all of the documents for translation.  I then made sure that all of the checks were in order. We wrote checks that equaled $11,940!  All the money we needed was there!  Praise God! We took pictures of it and with it, we prayed over it an then headed over to FedEx.

Irelyn making sure we included all of the necessary documents.

Eight months of blood sweat and tears went into this dossier.  When we started the process they told us we would have it finished in 1-4 months....yeah right!

It was a happy time getting to finally send this thing off.  Gavin does not normally get exited about things until they happen and he was smiling and talking to Irelyn about her brother and sister.  Such a sweet time!  I made sure to stop a moment, thank God and just take in all of the emotions.  I want to remember the feeling and excitement of being able to send off our dossier.  This may be the only time in our life that we get to experience this.  I honestly don't know how people do this more than once. It is so hard!  I am sure that as soon as we get them home, I will forget how difficult it was and want to start over.:)

Lovin Irelyn's "cheese smile"

Praying over the dossier. 

So it is in the mail on its way to our dossier coordinator in Washington State.  It will get to her on Tuesday at which point she will check to make sure everything is in order(please pray that it is).  She told me this will take about 48 hours.  She will then send it to be translated which takes another 48 hours.  Then it will be on its way to Ethiopia and we will be ready for our referral!  I can't wait to see God's timing for this adoption.  We just never know what will happen next and it is so fun!

We love you babies!

O you know...just dropping our dossier off at FedEx!

Lifesong Grant

God is moving in some pretty awesome ways with this Lifesong grant. What we are choosing to do is wait until November to tell you how much is in the account.  We are checking weekly because we will need to use some of the money before November but you guys have to wait!  It will be more fun that way!

All I can say is that we are touched and blessed by how God is using people to help us.

We can also say that our church elders are discussing matching more than three thousand dollars.  The way the grant works is that Lifesong recommends a grant and our church supplies the money if they choose to follow through with the recommendation. For us, Lifesong a recommended $3000 matching grant and made a note that said "more if we get two kids."  Well we have actually paid the international fee for the second child so we are sure that we will get two kids.  This means that our church may reconsider the amount that they will match.

Please be praying for the elders as they make this decisions.  We already feel so blessed to have the $3000 and definitely do not expect more. We know that God will bring the money somehow.  It is such a blessing to have our church family behind supporting us every step of they way.

Doing Irelyn's hair while I wait on God's timing.

This week has been a little rough for me.  After FedEx lost our last document for the dossier, I nearly fell apart.  I am just so ready to be on to the next step to get our kids.  I cried....and then I cried some more.  I did not cry because of the lost document.  I cried because I have not really cried good and hard since we started this process.  There is not a way for adoptive parents to prepare themselves for what it feels like to have children living thousands of miles away from you.  To feel so close yet so far and to try to get closer only to hit a paperwork road block.  It is tough and it is life changing.

Every time this specific document would come back to saying it needed to be changed, I would change it and stress out about getting it back to the mail.  I completely overreacted almost every time we had to send it back to the Secretary of State.  I would call Gavin away from work to get it notarized, put all of my plans on the back burner, and get really short with my family.  I was expecting to get the document back Monday or Tuesday.  When it did not arrive today, I called the Secretary of State who told me that it will be mailed tomorrow.  She also told me that the last one that we think we lost was sent back to them.  They then forwarded it USPS!  After all of my freaking out, how much do you wanna bet that both of those documents will come back on Friday!

Last night I gave this issue to God once again.  I decided that I did not care when they came back because it is all part of God's plan and I have no clue what he has in store for us next.  He wanted me to wait until this Friday to send in our dossier.  Even though things did not go how I thought I wanted them to go, I am so amazed by how he orchestrated all of these events centered around this one document to make sure we could not submit our dossier.  Is our God almighty or what!

So I learned my lesson and I am really at peace.  He has something better in mind for us than I could ever think up in my head.  Irelyn's hair has been my concentration while I wait.  I have been trying different styles although for the most part, her hair is too fine and short to work with.  I did accomplish cornrow style french braids.  I would have tried corn rows but a fidgety one year old is probably not the best to learn on.  I am going to try cornrows next as I heard that they will stay better.  The braids slipped out of her hair in about ten minutes!  It was cute while it lasted!

Yard Sale #3

Our yard sale went wonderfully! We had some wonderful people who generously donated their time to help us set up and tear down.  We ended up doing the yard sale at a lot that the water company that Gavin works for owns.  We got out there at about 4AM!  Gavin graded the lot a little and then I set up the tables.  At about 5:30, our help arrived and helped us move stuff from our garage to the yard sale site.  The yard sale was huge as usual and we were not done setting up until about 9.  Talk about hard work!  It was totally worth it!  We came out with about $1300.  What a blessing!  It was less than we made at our last yard sale but still a lot of money!

The guys! 

We have decided that we are going to send most of the leftover stuff over to goodwill or stepping stones.  Most of the stuff left is stuff that we have had for the last three yard sales and it just isn't selling.  We are going to get rid of it and start collecting new donations.  We are not sure if we will have time for another yard sale.  We will just have to see how many donations we get donated to us.  Honestly we are sort of hoping that this process goes so fast, we don't have time to have another one.  They are exhausting and take a lot of work to put on.  We also know that God calls us to be diligent and work hard while we wait for him to make this happen.  The next one will also have to take place in the winter and setting up a yard sale at 4 in the morning in December just does not sound fun.  We will just keep praying about it and keep see what donations come in.

The ladies!

We are also considering doing a car wash....maybe pretty soon while its still warm outside.  Does anyone have much experience with car washes?  How much you made?  How you made it successful 

It was huge!

We are also applying for more grants so please be praying for those.  At this point we are really working our fingers to the bone and are pretty tired.  We would love to get more grants and have to fundraiser less...but I guess so would every adopting family!  God never said this would be easy!

Irelyn's favorite toy....a huge bird cage.

All in all we are feeling very blessed this weekend.  We are blessed by the money made in the yard sale.  Blessed by the help of our friends and family this weekend, and blessed by the time we got to spend just the three of us raising money to bring our kids home.

Going to get lunch.  Don't worry i did not actually take her on the road.