More Waiting

We have been so excited about bringing our son home from Ethiopia. We submitted our dossier the first week in June. However, we were still short on finances. We also are still waiting for our CIS (immigration) report to be processed so we can send it off. We were told we would probably be travelling in late July or early August. We were beaming with excitement at the possibility of traveling so soon.

On Wednesday, June 21 the phone rang. It was our case worker with CWA. We were told that our dossier would not make it before the courts close in late August. They will not send the dossier on until the CIS approval comes and we have all the finances paid o our agency. We are still trying to figure out how to pay the remaining fees which is thousands of dollars. We have applied for grants, sold things on E-bay, whatever we can to raise funds for the adoption. Yet it still seems so far away.

If the CIS approval goes through fairly soon and we come up with all the finances, we are told that our case will probably be the first one to go through once the courts open back up in late September. We ask you all to continue praying for us. Pray especially for our swet little boy in Ethiopia. We are told that everytime a child leaves the orphanage, he gets depressed. We want him to know that he is loved. We long to bring him home.

Back in Memphis

Kellie and I are back from our overnight trip to Nashville. Friday was a busy day. Kellie's dad arrived in the morning to watch Timothy while Kellie and I ran errands for the adoption. We went downtown to the county clerk's office to get our notarized dossier county certified. That took longer than expected and we drove on to Nashville and made it to the Secretary of State's office just before they closed at 4:00. They authenticated our documents and we were finished! All that is left for our dossier is USCIS (immigration and fingerprinting). It is so nice to be almost finished and ready tp sen our dossier to our adoption agency who will than send it on to Ethiopia!

The rest of Friday night was spent relaxing in Nashville. Kellie and I drove around the Madison CHurch of Christ where I did an internship back in 1998-1999. It was nice to see the familiar building and think of the people I met there. We then drove to the Opry Mills area and went to the mall. It was really nice and it was nice just to be together. We had dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe and it felt so good to relax. Today (Saturday) we went to an adoption seminar through our agency which was held at the Family of God at Woodmont Hills church building. While we were the only people to attend and the information was not relevant (it was about choosing and agency and country to adopt from) it was great to meet people that have adopted from CWA and to have a face for someone associated with our agency.

We ask for all of you to pray for our immigration processing to go by quickly. We were informed that if it can be done within the next couple of weeks, we may be able to travel to get our son as soon as the end of July. Otherwise, it will be October or November.

Homestudy Complete!!

Finally! Things are moving along. Our homestudy has been finalized, all of our documents for our dossier have been notarized. Tomorrow we go downtown to the county clerk for county approlval, then we head to Nashville and hopefully make it in time to have the Secretary of State authenticate some documents for us. After that we wait for USCIS approval and fingerprinting and we are ready to send out our dossier. The only thing that is uncertain as far as the timing goes is the USCIS. Sometimes it takes up to 90 days, other times you are done in a week. We are praying for it to all be done very quickly. We hear from our case manager that if we get our USCIS approval within a week or two, we may have a slight (very slight) chance of traveling at the end of July to bring home our son! If the approval and appointment with USCIS takes a while, we will not be able to move forward for a couple of months because the Ethiopian courts close at the end of July until close to the beginning of September. Please pray for God's timing. Whatever he decides is best is what we want to happen. With the reality of bringing home our son beginning to kick in, we are looking for ways to raise money for the agency fees and travel to pick up our little boy. We are selling whatever we can find on ebay (would you like to make a bid?) and we are applying for grants. No luck so far, but we know God will work it out. Pray for a safe trip for Kellie and I as we travel to Nashville on Friday and return on Saturday. Timothy will stay with his Pop-Pop while we are away.