Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Our Dossier is in Russia!
Our dossier was sent to Russia the week after Thanksgiving. This is a significant piece of the process that has taken 6 months to accomplish. There were a few additional documents required for the adoption court in Russia that I had apostilled at the Texas Secretary of State office in Austin the Monday after Thanksgiving on the way to Fort Worth when I was taking my mother home after she had spent Thanksgiving week with us.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Now We Wait
I drove our completed dossier to the Texas Secretary of State Office in Austin on Monday November 3 so that our I-171 H could be apostille'd. The Secretary of State office is just across the street south of the Texas state capitol. A frind of ours in Colorado suggested that it could save a couple of weeks in our timeline by hand carrying our remaining documents for apostille in case there were any docuements that had to be redone. As it turned out the I-171H was not done correctly. The requirement is to send a copy of the I-171 H that is notarized and apostille'd to Russia. The problem was that we had not signed the copy that we had notarized so a new copy had to be made and notarized before it could receive an apostille. After a brief scare I ran down the street to the UPS store to have a new copy notarized. The whole process took about two hours after which I anxiously packed up the dossier and next day'd it to Hand In Hand.
The dossier contained: an 8x10 family photo, two 5x7 family photos, 12 pictures of our house, a photo notary statement, a letter of intent to adopt, 'Form 1', 'Form 2', three marriage certificates, three copies of our passport pages, letters of committment and obligation, psychological evaluation, letter of medical approval, doctor's license, financial statement, copy of deed to our home, declaration of attorney regarding property ownership, letters of employment, FBI clearances, Power of attorney for Olga in Bryansk, I-171 H, and a check for $6500. All of these documents were notarized and apostille'd. One document had two notarizations!
One of the more amazing things we have discovered is the Russian Ministry of Education searchable orphan database. (There is a link at the right bottom of this blog.) It contains pictures and information about Russian orphans. It currently appears to contain information about 75,795 boys and 52,007 girls. It can be translated via google translate...
The dossier contained: an 8x10 family photo, two 5x7 family photos, 12 pictures of our house, a photo notary statement, a letter of intent to adopt, 'Form 1', 'Form 2', three marriage certificates, three copies of our passport pages, letters of committment and obligation, psychological evaluation, letter of medical approval, doctor's license, financial statement, copy of deed to our home, declaration of attorney regarding property ownership, letters of employment, FBI clearances, Power of attorney for Olga in Bryansk, I-171 H, and a check for $6500. All of these documents were notarized and apostille'd. One document had two notarizations!
One of the more amazing things we have discovered is the Russian Ministry of Education searchable orphan database. (There is a link at the right bottom of this blog.) It contains pictures and information about Russian orphans. It currently appears to contain information about 75,795 boys and 52,007 girls. It can be translated via google translate...
Friday, October 31, 2008
WE HAVE OUR I-171H
Our Advance Processing of Orphan Petition approval arrived today. This means we have permission to immigrate a child from Russia- we are good to go now!
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Adoption Process, God, Finances, and Number of Children
The last couple of weeks have been really busy with the adoption. October 9 we received our “ORPHAN” letter from INS. October 10 we were fingerprinted at the local INS service center. October 13 we had 19 documents for our dossier notarized. October 14 we mailed the dossier documents to Austin for apostille. And then October 17 we applied for our adoption loan.
We are waiting for our INS approval letter which should come anytime in the next couple of weeks. Once it arrives we are going to hand carry the home study and a copy of the INS approval letter to Austin to have them apostilled. At that point we can send our dossier documents to the adoption agency for translation and then off to Russia.
None of our adoptions have ever gone like we planned. In 1996 we traveled to pick up 1 child and came home with 2. In 2001 we traveled to pick out 2 children and God revealed a third. This time it is on our hearts to adopt 2 children but our finances say 1 child.
However there is more to this story…
A couple who have been our mentors the last few years told us it has been on their heart, for some reason, that God was bringing us 4 kids. It might have just been the pizza they ate a day or two before but coming from them causes us to pay attention. Therefore we decided it might work better to have our paperwork set up to anticipate God’s sense of humor in never letting things happen the way we plan.
In 2001 we had a major headache changing from 2 to 3 kids because our INS paperwork had to change. This time we discovered that the INS paperwork allows us to ask permission for more than we might actually adopt- so we completed that form indicating we would adopt between 1 and 4 children. We talked to our social worker about the INS form but never asked her to approve us for that many, and in fact she reminded us that it did not matter what we put on the INS form because they would work from the number of children she approved on the home study. However, without asking, she approved us for 4 but then, at the request of the agency, changed that number to 2 in the home study since we are requesting our adoption agency to locate 1 child for us.
We have no idea what God is going to do but we know that we are approved for up to 4 children with minor paperwork modifications and we know that we are requesting our adoption agency to locate 1 child. We know that the effort to nail down how many children we are adopting is just odd enough to point toward the reality that God is working a plan that we will not recognize till it is all done!
We are waiting for our INS approval letter which should come anytime in the next couple of weeks. Once it arrives we are going to hand carry the home study and a copy of the INS approval letter to Austin to have them apostilled. At that point we can send our dossier documents to the adoption agency for translation and then off to Russia.
None of our adoptions have ever gone like we planned. In 1996 we traveled to pick up 1 child and came home with 2. In 2001 we traveled to pick out 2 children and God revealed a third. This time it is on our hearts to adopt 2 children but our finances say 1 child.
However there is more to this story…
A couple who have been our mentors the last few years told us it has been on their heart, for some reason, that God was bringing us 4 kids. It might have just been the pizza they ate a day or two before but coming from them causes us to pay attention. Therefore we decided it might work better to have our paperwork set up to anticipate God’s sense of humor in never letting things happen the way we plan.
In 2001 we had a major headache changing from 2 to 3 kids because our INS paperwork had to change. This time we discovered that the INS paperwork allows us to ask permission for more than we might actually adopt- so we completed that form indicating we would adopt between 1 and 4 children. We talked to our social worker about the INS form but never asked her to approve us for that many, and in fact she reminded us that it did not matter what we put on the INS form because they would work from the number of children she approved on the home study. However, without asking, she approved us for 4 but then, at the request of the agency, changed that number to 2 in the home study since we are requesting our adoption agency to locate 1 child for us.
We have no idea what God is going to do but we know that we are approved for up to 4 children with minor paperwork modifications and we know that we are requesting our adoption agency to locate 1 child. We know that the effort to nail down how many children we are adopting is just odd enough to point toward the reality that God is working a plan that we will not recognize till it is all done!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Hurricane Ike and Adoption Plans
Hurricane Ike slowed us down 2-3 weeks. The storm itself was pretty wild- non stop heavy, heavy wind and rain from 11:45 PM until 10:00 AM! We came out o.k. but about 1 in every 5 houses in our neighborhood had roof damage. There just was not any power, gas, food, or working stop lights for the next week around here- glad we had a generator, lots of extra food, and gas.
Our social worker next day 'Fed Exed' our home study to the Houston INS the day before the storm. The next day delivery did not get there until two and one half weeks later- Fed Ex kept it safe in Tennessee until Houston INS could receive it. So that delayed us by 3 weeks...
We will send our documents to our adoption agency for translation and on to Russia as soon as we receive confirmation from the Houston INS which we anticipate will be around the first of November. We also received word a couple of weeks ago that one of our fees had just increased $3,000 so we sat down and evaluated all of our expenses and decided that it would be best to adopt 1 instead of 2 children. Our paperwork will be such that if God has other plans for us we can easily change back to adopting 2. But right now we are deciding if we are adopting Marty or Makai! :)
Our social worker next day 'Fed Exed' our home study to the Houston INS the day before the storm. The next day delivery did not get there until two and one half weeks later- Fed Ex kept it safe in Tennessee until Houston INS could receive it. So that delayed us by 3 weeks...
We will send our documents to our adoption agency for translation and on to Russia as soon as we receive confirmation from the Houston INS which we anticipate will be around the first of November. We also received word a couple of weeks ago that one of our fees had just increased $3,000 so we sat down and evaluated all of our expenses and decided that it would be best to adopt 1 instead of 2 children. Our paperwork will be such that if God has other plans for us we can easily change back to adopting 2. But right now we are deciding if we are adopting Marty or Makai! :)
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Time Line
Our home study and psych evaluation went a little bit slower than we had hoped so I modified our time line. We have not done anything on the adoption in the last couple of weeks due to Hurricane Ike. The Houston INS office who is processing our petition to adopt a foreign born orphan has probably lost a week or two so our time line might end up needing to be extended a little more. We wish it would go faster but realize God directs the timing to achieve exactly what he wants...
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Our Daily Prayer
Back in June we picked out the names Marty and Makai for our new boys. That might be the names we stick with but our daily prayer in the Shoulders house has been that God would take care of Marty and Makai...
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Our Passion
We are stepping out on faith to adopt 2 boys. Our agency, Hand In Hand International Adoptions, is steering us towards the Bryansk region of Russia. Bryansk is one of the few regions in Russia that is still willing to adopt more than one un-related child to a family. That along with the fact that Bryansk does not give families any advance information about the children they are matching makes us ideally suited for that region because we learned a long time ago that ultimately we had to trust everyone involved in the adoption process in Russia- not for the feint of heart!
This adoption is going to cost around $50,000. We prayed for over a year about the financial piece and the Lord continues to focus our attention on adopting the boys. We are taking out loans for the agency and US fees which is about half. An organization called Kingdom Kids is helping us raise the money to help cover the orphanage and Russian support fees. We are seeking people to partner with us in this adoption journey. You will find a link to Kingdom Kids below.
This adoption is going to cost around $50,000. We prayed for over a year about the financial piece and the Lord continues to focus our attention on adopting the boys. We are taking out loans for the agency and US fees which is about half. An organization called Kingdom Kids is helping us raise the money to help cover the orphanage and Russian support fees. We are seeking people to partner with us in this adoption journey. You will find a link to Kingdom Kids below.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Application Sent to Hand in Hand International Adoptions
It has been upon our hearts to go back to Russia for 5 or 6 years but it was in October of 2006 that God made it clear to us that we would adopt again. Since then we have been praying and considering when and how. The passion to adopt grew to the point that we began praying and talking about it with the kids. Once we pulled the name books out it was a done deal! The application to Hand In Hand International Adoptions in Tucson, Arizona is in the mail as of May 20, 2008. HERE WE GO!
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