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! :)
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