June Adoption Update!
With adoption, there’s a lot of “HURRY UP” and then “WAITING.” It has been quite the whirlwind the last few months with some ups and downs and more hoops to go through and waiting than we thought! Finishing the home study and dossier deadline literally became a second job for us, so many things had to be put “on hold” for a season, one being this blog! But we’re thankful we’re in a “waiting time” right now and can jump back on our blog and start sharing a lot of content here again! :)
Several things to update on…
Home Study & Dossier—
Our home study was completed and approved in March! Yay!! Then we had until May 14th to complete the dossier (international adoption file with home study, lots and lots of paperwork, and immigration approval included).
Some things we worked on since March:
-I created a 6 page photo collage showing our family, pets, house, yard, family, and friends, and photos of us doing things we like to do as a family. This is for the adoption agency board to review along with the dossier and video.
- We created a video tour of our home and introducing ourselves for the adoption agency board in South America.
- FBI background and fingerprints
- William and I both had a psychological evaluation and report clearance from a psychologist proving we weren't crazy people. Haha! This evaluation is just standard for each adopting family for the country we’re adopting from.
- 3 recommendation letters from friends
- We applied for USCIS immigration approval to adopt mid-April.
- We received all of our passports at the end of March.
- We had two separate applications forms for the South American country’s adoption agency and their government immigration clearance.
- We wrote a post adopt letter.
- William and I went the the local immigration office (Homeland Security) to get fingerprinted for them. Yes, we have had a total of 3 sets of fingerprints since January! Haha! - MOST of the paperwork or like birth certificates and marriage license, medial clearance, etc. all had to be notarized, then certified by the county clerks, and the apostilled. Apostilled was a new vocabulary word for us! It is a special seal that certifies foreign documents. And it has to be done at the state capitol or Washington, D.C. UPS became our best friends! :)
So, now we are just waiting on USCIS immigration clearance which can take 8-12 weeks. We’re coming up on the 8 week mark this week, so we should hear back within the next few weeks!
Travel—
I know a lot of you are asking if we have travel dates yet, next steps, etc. With USCIS immigration taking 8-12 weeks for our I800-A papers to be accepted and cleared, and then after hat these immigration approval papers will go into our dossier. Next, an official referral phase can take 4-6 weeks. Then upon accepting country’s official referral she said travel time could be around 4 months out from that right now. So...now we’re looking at September for the earliest...possibly October.
That’s a very brief summary but I assure you there’s A LOT more work and details in all of that. Haha! We were really hoping to go this summer but we are trusting God’s perfect timing!! It’s so hard to know when everything exactly will be as a timeline is fluid with international adoption! Both countries agreeing and have their own processing times, etc. The good news is, after the official referral acceptance (we are in a soft referral meaning we have given the country our letter of intent to adopt 2 waiting children), then we can Skype video call them!!! We’re thankful that Maritza and Moises from our Hispanic church family have agreed to help us with translations in these video calls! Even though we are quickly learning Spanish, we don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring out what all they are saying to us as these Skype calls will be brief 10-15 minutes!
Spanish—
We are continuing Spanish tutoring through the summer with Koen’s Spanish teacher who is from South America and has 25+ years teaching Spanish and ESL. She will also be helping our new kiddos with ESL, too! Since our “Tyler” and “Jess” do not know any English yet and will have only had a short amount of time with ESL lessons shortly before we arrive in country, we feel it’s really important for us to learn Spanish as much as we can before we arrive in South America. We want to be confident in communicating with the kids and also around the town we will be living in for 3-8 weeks.
Since the beginning of May, we have started going to the Spanish-speaking Bible classes on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights so we can get familiar with being immersed in the Spanish language and also to build relationships with the Hispanic members at church. They are all so encouraging and looking forward to meeting and loving on our new kiddos! We are very grateful to them for their love and support! Our intent is for our home to be bilingual indefinitely! We feel like the kids’ first language is part of their identity and we do not want to take that away from them. Our goal is for all 5 of us to become fluent in Spanish and English!
Fundraising—
March, April, and May were amazing fundraisers to finish our goal of raising enough funds for our dossier fee. We reached our goal!! We are VERY grateful to each one who donated funds to reach this goal with us! Thank you!!
March fundraisers:
Matilda Jane & Noonday Jewelry
Our sweet friends Moriah McCrary (Matilda Jane) and Melissa Jennings (NoonDay jewelry) did adoption fundraiser shows for us! $266 was raised with that and went straight to our dossier fee! Thank you so much ladies!!
Egg My Yard for Easter
“Egg My Yard” fundraiser went great! We “egged” 23 houses and over 1,100 eggs and raised $825 that went straight into our dossier fund! A HUGE THANK YOU to each of you who gave funds to purchase items for it or donated candy, small toys, and eggs—because of you, we were able to put all of the sponsor donations straight into our dossier fee! And another HUGE THANK YOU to all of the parents and “surprise Easter Bunnies” who sponsored another family’s yard—thank you for supporting us and letting us have some fun for your kids! We really hope they loved it!!
April Fundraiser:
Bake sale- Bakin’ for Dough
College friends Kathryne Guinn and Cayla Slater organized and hosted a virtual bake sale. They do these as a service gift fundraiser to adopting families! There were several bakers for this event who donated many different baked goods! We’re so thankful for all of their time and talent! They raised $721 which all went straight into our dossier fund! This was a HUGE blessing for us for friends to volunteer to organize and execute a successful fundraiser for us in April, while we were incredibly busy (and tired many days) finishing up last minute dossier paperwork and appointments!
May fundraiser:
Virtual 5K on May 1st, A Home for Jolee Foundation Grant $5,000.00
This is a yearly event every May! We plan on making this an annual event for our family to support other adopting families, and we encourage you to do the same! :) You can click here to register: www.ahomeforjolee.org/fundraisers
Funds Update—our personal funds so far: $8,650
Fundraisers and AHFJ Grant: $12,000
Remaining estimated total cost: $28,950
Our next big fee is the referral fee $10,100 + extra sibling fee $5,000 + Kidsave Family fee $2,000 = $17,100—this amount is due in full upon accepting the official referral. We estimate this could be as early as July, So far we have $6,400.00 of this total.
After these fees we will still have more agency and in-country processing fees, travel costs for all 5 of us, adoption court fees, and visas and passports for “Tyler” and “Jess.”
We are praying hard that we will be awarded several grants! There’s no guarantee as there are A LOT of families applying for these grants! Most of these take up to 60 days or more to review and receive funding. Please pray abundance over these grants we have applied for in May and June:
- our adoption agency’s foundation grant
- Show Hope
- Life Song (this one offers a matching grant for up to the amount we have already fundraised!!)
- Gift of Adoption (this one covers travel costs, and is awarded the month of travel!!)
Again, thank you for your continued prayers, encouragement, and support! You guys are lifting us up through this whole process! The Lord is giving us strength and guiding us in daily surrender to His plan and perfect timing! Those of our adoption-family friends will agree with us when we say this process is not for the faint of heart! Deepened faith, perseverance, grit, patience, and love are grown in the process! It is beautifully messy! It takes a lot of time, mental, and emotional sacrifice. Will it be worth it? Absolutely!
By the way, as much as we would LOVE to share their photo with you here on our blog, we signed a privacy agreement with our agency that we cannot share their photo on social media or websites until the adoption is final. However! If we are visiting in person, I will gladly show you their photo from my phone, just ask! They are so cute!
With much love,
