Our Story for His Glory: This and that

7.15.2008

This and that

As of yesterday we received our family coordinator from America World Adoption Agency and got a massive email filled with papers, forms and instructions. Although she told me not to be overwhelmed, I was overwhelmed! I printed off the instructions and after putting the kids to bed I reviewed them and went to work.

Today my mom has the kids and I have:

Ordered birth certificates for me and Clay, Ordered our marriage certificate, Filled out visa forms, Contacted Clay's employer for verification of employment, contacted our insurance company and filled out a lot of forms. I feel good! I am not so overwhelmed today. This week we should get a call from our social worker and will start our homestudy. I forgot to mention we have 8 to 10 hours of online training to do within the next 8 weeks too! I have actually done a lot of mine but Clay hasn't quite started.

I do want this blog to focus on our adoption but I have to post a picture of my angels. I am so privileged to be a stay at home mom and love every minute of it. This picture may show you a little bit of the fun we have here.

This is my little girl's first time to finger paint or body paint! She loved it!

This is our son who will be 3 in September saying John 3:16. He is the sweetest child ever!

Our daughter sporting her Africa shirt!

5 comments:

Gina said...: Hi! My name is Gina. I live in Oklahoma. We too just got our call and big email yesterday to start the paperchase! We are doing a concurrent adoption with China. We are hoping we can move extra fast since we have a lot of current paperwork already! Good luck to you!; July 15, 2008 at 7:23 PM
kim said...: Good luck on your paperwork. Let us know if you have questions.

Kim (AWAA -YG)
www.ablissfulheart.blogspot.com; July 15, 2008 at 9:30 PM
Anonymous said...: Hi! My husband Rodney also works for the same company as Clay, thus passing on your website. We have a 5 year old girl adopted from Russia (2004), a 2 year old biological girl, and we just returned home from Russia on June 18th with our 1st son. We wish you all the luck in the world. God's children are so special!
Rebecca
www.freewebs.com/myrussianson; July 17, 2008 at 3:13 PM
Amber said...: It definitely is overwhelming to look at it as a whole, but if you look at it one by one, it seems like it can be done!; July 18, 2008 at 8:35 AM
Bliss said...: Hi are on the very same page in the paper chasing. We got the email from AWAA on Monday. I had already started collecting a lot of the papers as this the third dossier we have worked on. We are hoping to use the home study that was prepared for our China adoption so that should speed things up quite a bit. So good luck with everything and who knows maybe we will be traveling together.

Blessings,
Bliss; July 18, 2008 at 9:34 AM

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What is this blog all about?

This blog was started to keep everyone informed about our adoption from Ethiopia. We prayed that it would help raise awareness of the need to care for orphans. We are now home with the most precious Ethiopian boy, Nile. We are so in love and have grown so much through this process. God has done so many miracles to get us to where we are today. If you are a first time reader you can read here to see how God lead us to adoption. We try to keep the focus of this blog on Nile's progress, information on Ethiopia, our adoption and orphan care opportunities. Click here to watch the video of our trip to Ethiopia.

Why Adopt from Ethiopia?

• One in six children die before their fifth birthday
• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old
• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition
• The median age in Ethiopia is 17.8 years
• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)
• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone, and there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia.
• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa
• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)
• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.
• Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002.
• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.
• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports.

OUR TIMELINE

Dec 07-Praying about baby #3
Jan 08- We feel God leading us towards adoption
Pray, pray, pray-research-waiting until our daughter is 18 months
June 20, 08- Mailing paper work to AWAA
July 1, 08- application approved by AWAA for Ethiopia program-Let the fun begin!
July 7th, 08- Mailing signed agreement and initial payment to AWAA
July 14th, 08-Got assigned a family coordinator and lots of paperwork.
July 23rd, 08- I have tons of paperwork done and notarized! Things I've gotten together: application letter, submitted I-600, background checks, birth certs, marriage cert, physicals, proof of employment, proof of insurance, applied for passports
Aug 1, 08- We are rocking through some paperwork! 90% of it is done! We just are waiting on our homestudy to get scheduled!
Aug 7, 08- made appt with social worker to start homestudy in 2 weeks. Got fingerprinting appointments. Working on dossier and homestudy requirements and paperwork.
Aug 15, 08- USCIS fingerprints
Aug 19, 08- first home study meeting(@ Panera)
Aug 20, 08- Second home study (@ our house)
Aug 27, 08- Clay's individual meeting with social worker
Sept 2, 08- Tracy's individual meeting with social worker(Home study done-Now we wait on the report)
Sept 25, 08- We got our finalized home study in the mail today and overnighted it to USCIS. Now we wait for the I-171!
Nov 19, 08- Finally got the I-171
Nov 20, 08- America World has our Dossier
Dec 12, 08- Dossier sent to Ethiopia (DTE!!)
Dec 18, 08- Dossier landed in Ethiopia
July 9, 09- Got a referral for a 4 week old boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aug 19, 09- Court date, we passed 1st time!!!
Sept 15, 09- Gotcha Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nov 19, 09- court date for readoption

7.15.2008

This and that

5 comments:

Happy #adoptionday2017