Checklists

I love lists!  I’m one of those people who would have lists to organize all my lists!  Seriously.  I have grocery lists.  Clean out my purse and you’ll probably find many old crumpled grocery lists from past trips to Walmart and Super Target.  Actually, I just cleaned out my purse and it’s now empty, but there were at least 6 old, scribbled lists, trust me!  I have library book lists for all the books I want to check out for the kids, including a list of children’s books on adoption for my boys to read now and my future daughter to read as she grows up (blog post on this in the near future).  I have lists of all the things we’d like for the house like kitchen floor refinishing, snow blower, water softener, down payment for a minivan.  I have started on lists of things we’ll need for a little girl because let’s face it; the last 7 years have been all about boys and I have nothing pink or girly in my house.  I have Christmas card lists and adoption fundraising lists.  The list of lists is endless.  And I just received 2 more this week.

We have been in contact with our home study social worker she emailed me the checklist for updating our home study:

o   Get fingerprinted for our FBI criminal background checks (this report takes 6-8 weeks)

o   Order all of our background checks from states we have lived in since turning 18 (not costly but time consuming)

o   Update our medical reports for both Jay and I and the boys as well

We have also received our checklist from our adoption agency.  Our agency reviewed our Nepal dossier, contrasted it with what is needed for China and found out that almost every single piece of paperwork needs to be re-done because our Nepal dossier is over 12 months old.  So, we have the following to complete for the dossier:

o   Change our country immigration from Nepal to China via the USCIS (could be a lengthy wait)

o   Purchase new birth certificates and marriage certificates. 

o   Rewrite our employment letters, power of attorney documents, financial worksheet, education and employment history documents

o   Update our Match Form regarding which special needs we’re open to. 

One other thing.  We'll also have a small stack of paperwork to complete for the college kid who lives in our basement.  He's a great guy who works for my husband at church and he needed a quieter place to stay while he finished school.  Because he'll still most likely live here after our home study is complete for China, we need to include him.  So, background checks, fingerprints, et cetera are due for him as well.  Hopefully it won't be a big deal.

Where are we now?  I’ve created a new timeline to the right.  I’ve kept our Nepal timeline way at the bottom just as a reminder of where we’ve been on this loopy journey.  It’s all a part of our story!  But China has its own new timeline in the right column. 

I’ll start tackling the list as quickly as I can but the governmental paperwork is totally out of my hands.  We’d appreciate prayers for a timely paperwork process.  My goal would be to finish everything by Christmas. 

12 Weeks Left?

This morning I received a very nice wall post on Facebook from a friend looking for an adoption update. Yes, it's been a while. Sorry for that! As I was typing my reply, I received an update directly from our agency.

Our final homestudy was just sent to USCIS yesterday. It was in my head that it had been sent 2 weeks ago when we received our official copy of the home study. But alas, it is still in the mail to DC. And much to my disappointment, we have been informed that it may take up to 12 weeks to be processed, approved and for us to receive that final document we need for our dossier. For those of you looking at your calendars, that would put us back to early February! Oh my! We had hoped to send our complete dossier to Nepal after the first of the year. And now it looks like we could be 2+ months later than hoped.

On the positive side, it does give us more time to fundraise. Gifts have been slow going lately but we're confident that our God will provide.

Please pray that we could receive our approval and final document, as well as the last $2800 we need for our dossier to be finished. And I'm praying to have it before the end of the year, but I know that it's all in His timing, not mine. But "He is able, more than able, to do much more than I could ever dream!"

Updates on the unrest in Nepal? I'm not sure. It's been a busy couple of weeks in our household and I haven't been to the Nepali news websites in a while. Any other adoptive families out there following the news?

Blessings to you all! More updates as they become available, but I guess it might be quite a while before we hear anything (sigh).

What's in our Dossier -- Part 3

Here we are with the last of our dossier! Okay, it isn't quite the last because we are still awaiting our I-171H form and need to be invited to Omaha for the finger printing appointment for that form to be issued. But this is the last of the bulk mailings we have for the dossier. Included in this mailing were:

• 10 passport size pictures of each adopting parent
• 2 Employment and Educational History Forms
• 2 copies of our home study agency license
• 2 copies of our home study agency non-profit certificate: the 501(C)3
• 2 copies of our home study social worker’s license or credentials
• 2 photocopies of the photo ID/signature page of our passport for each applicant
• 2 sets (12 in each set) of photographs of our home and exterior views from our home.

The home study just needs 2 sections rewritten, but should be on it's way to our agency by now. And thanks to donations by friends and family, that $300 we were waiting on for the Home Study Review Fee ($600 total) has been sent to our agency. God just showed up and dropped these gifts in our lap. Thanks to those of you who have answered the call and served us! We are completely humbled by His provision through your support!

With the dossier almost done, we are trying to raise funds for the Completion of Documents Fee. This fee is $4000 and you can see our ticker at the top of our blog on where we are. We keep receiving little checks here and there and the ticker is creeping forward. Wow! Yes, even a little bit helps! Please be in prayer for these finances. I am still praying that we can remain debt free through 2009. If we can accomplish this phase of fundraising, we will move onto phase 2 which will be an additional $7000 that will be due in January as our paperwork goes overseas!

We hope to hear of news of referrals going out for families on the waiting list. Our agency is confident that the families going before us should be receiving news of their children soon!

What's in our Dossier -- Part 2

Here we are again with another milestone -- the second shipment of paperwork to our agency! This is the second of three mailings we’ll complete and it is comprised of Certified Documents. We had to provide:

· 2 copies of birth certificates for both Jay and I
· 2 copies of birth certificates for both boys
· 2 copies of our marriage license

These all had to be certified copies, not photocopies, and with recent issue dates stamped on them so that they don’t “expire” before being sent to Nepal. This isn’t really a huge feat in and of itself, but the cost of ordering multiple copies of all this stuff added up. Your gifts and donations helped cover these expenses and help keep us debt free to date!

You may recall that in our first mailing last month, we were missing 2 key Notarized Documents for our dossier. Thankfully the first document has now arrived and was also included in today’s shipment. That included:

· 2 copies of our Nebraska State background check for both Jay and I

Our home study is done too! We've seen the rough draft and our agency should be approving it this week. Then we can have that notarized and added to our dossier as well.

Next we move onto section 3 of 3. I have most of these documents done but am waiting to receive Jay's renewed passport. We also expect to be invited (yes, you read that correctly) to Omaha to have our fingerprints taken for our Federal file. When those are taken, we will be issued our I-171H form and we’ll be done with the dossier! We hope these final things will be received within 4 to 6 weeks.

Urgent Prayer Request
Friends you may have read this on Facebook. When our paperwork is done, we will owe the next payment to our agency. The amount due will be $4000. Right now, we have a commitment from a family member to cover a quarter of that cost. Would you please join us in prayer that we will continue to receive financial support from friends and family who have received our support letter? I truly believe that with God’s provision, we can finish 2009 without taking on any loans. Please pray specifically for the $3000 that we’ll need in the next 6 weeks or so.

Shortly following that, there will be an even larger payment due to Nepal as our paperwork goes overseas in December or January. But we’ll take things one step at a time.

If you would like to be a part of the journey, donations are being accepted at our agency! Please mail a check payable to La Vida International along with a note stating it is for the Jay & Brooke Collins adoption from Nepal to:

La Vida International

150 S. Warner Rd. Ste. 144

King of Prussia, PA 19406

Thank you for your continued support! More updates to come as we finish this final section of our dossier.

Answered Prayer

We've all heard it before. God does answer prayer, but sometimes the answer isn't what we'd hope for. To that, I ask you readers, just what were you praying for this last week anyway?

Last week we had asked for prayers for our home study to be finished and that our social worker would receive Jay's clearance forms from Florida and both of our FBI clearances to be completed. Well, our social worker emailed me this week and asked if she had made the request from FL or if we did. Florida is one state from which she knew she had to request the clearance. The other states we have lived in allowed us to make the request personally. But after waiting for probably a month plus, our social worker found no evidence that she had sent the request to Florida in the first place. Bummer! She apologized profusely and it's all fine and good. No harm done. But she sent us a form to fill out and send down there while she was out on vacation over the weekend. Our request should arrive there early this week and hopefully Jay's clearance will arrive within a week or two. Adoption is long process with bumps and hurdles. This is just the first of many I'm preparing for.