Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Just a little update
Our paperwork is coming together. We got one of our background checks back in the mail this week. Yeah! We have also finally got an appointment scheduled for our required "psychological evaluation," and it will be free. We've had the first set of documents reviewed by our agency, and they look good! So, we are taking a short break for a vacation, and hopefully when we return, more documents will be waiting for us. Thanks for your prayers!
Friday, October 22, 2010
Baby Bedding and Updates
Things have been moving along. I'll tell you about a little update, but first:
Update: Ok, so now I was going to say that I talked to USCIS again and found out that our application was not suspended. They said that people get those "your application was suspended due to insufficient payment" letters all the time. So they said not to worry. Our application hasn't been assigned a office person yet, but at least they said that the fingerprints have been sent on to be processed. That is good news.
I thought I would also provide another explanation about our adoption process, since it is hard to wrap your head around when you are not the one going through it.
Please explain the process. So, there are several steps involved in the adoption process. Completing the home study was one of the first steps. The home study declares that we are fit to be parents, and our home it safe. This completed study is used and examined by multiple agencies. For instance, we are in one of the next steps, applying for permission from the US citizen and Immigration office to bring a foreign person into the United States. The USCIS looks at our home study when they process our application. With their approval, we will be able to get a visa from the US embassy in Kenya to bring our child to the US. You can't just enter the US with out a visa (otherwise you are illegal!).
Our next step is putting together a dossier. The dossier also includes the home study paperwork. The dossier is different because it is the final package that gets sent to the Burundian government. The Burundian government has their own requirements (not necessarily the same as the US) for parents who want to adopt from their country. So, yes we had to get background checks for our home study for every place we lived in the last five years. And now, for the dossier, the Burundi government is requiring background checks for the last 5 years. The home study (mainly because of the requirements for the Hague Treaty) also required child-abuse registry releases from every state we lived in since we were 18. It is a long list! Being in the military is not easy for this process!
Okay, so next authentication is needed because we are going to be sending notarized documents to Burundi. Now every state may have a different procedure on notaries, and certainly the Burundian government would have no idea if a notary is real or fake. So, someone in the US government puts their stamp of approval on all the signatures, notaries and such to prove that they are truly in fact authentic. This makes the Burundian government happy, to see big stamps of approval on things, so they wouldn't have to figure it all out.
Where are you in the process? We are gathering documents for the dossier. As we gather, they are being reviewed for accuracy from our agency. Once gathering and reviewing is complete, we will be authenticating things. We are hoping to have the gathering done, the authenticating started, and everything turned in to our agency by the end of the year.
What does this also mean? I am excited to say that beginning the authentication process means that we will also be talking to our agency about finding us a child. This is necessary because our dossier will be sent with a letter to adopt a certain child, who is named in the letter. So... it is possible that we may have a face, a name, and information about our child by the end of the year!! Woohoo! Please be in prayer for this to happen quickly. I am more than excited to get to see who he/she/or they are!
What have you been learning through this? Many good lessons. But one that is sticking with me right now is that God has given us such a privilege to adopt! It's amazing to me that God would choose us, and count us worthy of the task to parent an adopted child from Burundi. He is entrusting us with this sacred responsibility, and not everyone receives the blessing. We are indeed blessed to be part of this process. We are indeed blessed to be a home to a child who has no home. We are indeed blessed to be a mother and father to a child who has no mother and father. We are blessed to experience God's joy and goodness as He brings into our family the child that He has specifically prepared for us. We are specifically prepared for our child, and they are specifically prepared for us. God does the work. I am so thankful that He has given us this privilege, and I am super excited to see what the future holds for our family!
I thought this bedding set was really cute. I like the jungle theme. And I love the giraffes!
I like the dark wood furniture too.
Plus, my favorite part about this set, is the rug!
And the set should work well in whatever house we have, even when we are renting and can't paint the walls. (These things you have to think about when you move around as much as we do!)
Update: Ok, so now I was going to say that I talked to USCIS again and found out that our application was not suspended. They said that people get those "your application was suspended due to insufficient payment" letters all the time. So they said not to worry. Our application hasn't been assigned a office person yet, but at least they said that the fingerprints have been sent on to be processed. That is good news.
I thought I would also provide another explanation about our adoption process, since it is hard to wrap your head around when you are not the one going through it.
Please explain the process. So, there are several steps involved in the adoption process. Completing the home study was one of the first steps. The home study declares that we are fit to be parents, and our home it safe. This completed study is used and examined by multiple agencies. For instance, we are in one of the next steps, applying for permission from the US citizen and Immigration office to bring a foreign person into the United States. The USCIS looks at our home study when they process our application. With their approval, we will be able to get a visa from the US embassy in Kenya to bring our child to the US. You can't just enter the US with out a visa (otherwise you are illegal!).
Our next step is putting together a dossier. The dossier also includes the home study paperwork. The dossier is different because it is the final package that gets sent to the Burundian government. The Burundian government has their own requirements (not necessarily the same as the US) for parents who want to adopt from their country. So, yes we had to get background checks for our home study for every place we lived in the last five years. And now, for the dossier, the Burundi government is requiring background checks for the last 5 years. The home study (mainly because of the requirements for the Hague Treaty) also required child-abuse registry releases from every state we lived in since we were 18. It is a long list! Being in the military is not easy for this process!
Okay, so next authentication is needed because we are going to be sending notarized documents to Burundi. Now every state may have a different procedure on notaries, and certainly the Burundian government would have no idea if a notary is real or fake. So, someone in the US government puts their stamp of approval on all the signatures, notaries and such to prove that they are truly in fact authentic. This makes the Burundian government happy, to see big stamps of approval on things, so they wouldn't have to figure it all out.
Where are you in the process? We are gathering documents for the dossier. As we gather, they are being reviewed for accuracy from our agency. Once gathering and reviewing is complete, we will be authenticating things. We are hoping to have the gathering done, the authenticating started, and everything turned in to our agency by the end of the year.
What does this also mean? I am excited to say that beginning the authentication process means that we will also be talking to our agency about finding us a child. This is necessary because our dossier will be sent with a letter to adopt a certain child, who is named in the letter. So... it is possible that we may have a face, a name, and information about our child by the end of the year!! Woohoo! Please be in prayer for this to happen quickly. I am more than excited to get to see who he/she/or they are!
What have you been learning through this? Many good lessons. But one that is sticking with me right now is that God has given us such a privilege to adopt! It's amazing to me that God would choose us, and count us worthy of the task to parent an adopted child from Burundi. He is entrusting us with this sacred responsibility, and not everyone receives the blessing. We are indeed blessed to be part of this process. We are indeed blessed to be a home to a child who has no home. We are indeed blessed to be a mother and father to a child who has no mother and father. We are blessed to experience God's joy and goodness as He brings into our family the child that He has specifically prepared for us. We are specifically prepared for our child, and they are specifically prepared for us. God does the work. I am so thankful that He has given us this privilege, and I am super excited to see what the future holds for our family!
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Book Review
Here is a book that I just finished reading:
Love in the Driest Season: a Family Memoir by Neely Tucker
I actually found it in the library, and discovered that is was a really good book. The author is a writer/reporter for the Washington Post newspaper, who spent many years in Africa covering stories in various countries there. He was based in Zimbabwe, and he and his wife come across a baby in a local orphanage that changes their lives. He writes about their pursuit of adopting this young girl at a time when it was generally understood that Americans don't adopt Zimbabwean children.
There are several reasons why I liked the book. One was the fact that they were trying to adopt when there wasn't any precedent for adopting in place. They had to "pave the way," be the first to push through the bureaucratic system to be able to adopt the child they grew to love. The amount of work and hurdles they had amazed me, from people "accidentally" losing all their paperwork to having to get fingerprinted and background checked multiple times.
I am in a similar situation. We will be one of the first families to adopt from Burundi, at least under the Hague treaty. There is no precedent. There is no Burundi Adoption Support Group. There is no message boards or chat forums for "parents of children adopted from Burundi." There is no true guideline on how the adoption will go through in the country or how long it will take. So, though I don't expect to face the same hurdles as the Tuckers did, I feel like: if they can push though it, with all their difficulties, and still make it out with a complete family... than we can too!
The other reason that I like the book is the eye-opening descriptions of what was going on in Africa. Mr. Tucker was there to cover many stories including civil war in the Congo, genocide in Rwanda, the bombing of the US embassy in Kenya, and the horrific state of orphans and the AIDS crisis. He described things that I hope never to see in my lifetime, yet I am shocked that they do exist. It was a clear picture of what we need to be aware of in this world, but what so many people are not seeing or understanding.
So, if you happen to run across this book in your library I would recommend it. (There are a few unwholesome words in it, though. I try to just skip over them.)
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Update and Snags
Sorry I have been absent lately, but we've been busy and ran into a few snags. One of the most disappointing is that our application to US government for our I-800A was suspended due to "insufficient funds." I just got the letter in the mail this week which included a bill saying we still owe $160 for the fingerprinting fees. The frustrating part is that at the bottom of the same bill it says (which is what we were told) that US citizens that are living abroad are exempt from paying the fingerprinting fees.... And they sent this letter to our overseas address!
So, I immediately called somebody. First, the USCIS's Military Help-Line. They couldn't help me, so they told me to call the regular customer service with USCIS. They couldn't help me either, so they told me to call the section in charge of the Hague adoptions. (The Hague treaty, designed to prevent child-trafficking, was signed by Burundi and the US, so it requires extra regulations to follow, and more paperwork). The Hague people told me that they didn't have our application. She said that it was delivered to a "lock box" and then it gets transferred to their office, which could take up to 15 days! Our letter says our application was received Oct. 4th. So, I was told to wait and call back next week (though she really wanted me to call back at the end of the month), to see if they have received it. In the meantime, it is suspended.
The same day I also got an email that one of our background checks is requiring us to pay more for some extra copies. So I still have to get the money to them.
The good thing is that I got our doctor's physicals scheduled for next week with no problem. But our required "psychological evaluation" is going to be harder to schedule than I thought.
So, running into delays is hard, but I have to remind myself that God has everything in His timing. He knew from the beginning that someone would make a mistake and delay our application. He could have prevented it. But He has an exact time for when our application would go through. And He also wants to teach us to rely on Him and trust Him.
But it doesn't hurt to pray for a speedy process from here on out! We hope to have all our paperwork done by the end of the year. Thanks for praying!
So, I immediately called somebody. First, the USCIS's Military Help-Line. They couldn't help me, so they told me to call the regular customer service with USCIS. They couldn't help me either, so they told me to call the section in charge of the Hague adoptions. (The Hague treaty, designed to prevent child-trafficking, was signed by Burundi and the US, so it requires extra regulations to follow, and more paperwork). The Hague people told me that they didn't have our application. She said that it was delivered to a "lock box" and then it gets transferred to their office, which could take up to 15 days! Our letter says our application was received Oct. 4th. So, I was told to wait and call back next week (though she really wanted me to call back at the end of the month), to see if they have received it. In the meantime, it is suspended.
The same day I also got an email that one of our background checks is requiring us to pay more for some extra copies. So I still have to get the money to them.
The good thing is that I got our doctor's physicals scheduled for next week with no problem. But our required "psychological evaluation" is going to be harder to schedule than I thought.
So, running into delays is hard, but I have to remind myself that God has everything in His timing. He knew from the beginning that someone would make a mistake and delay our application. He could have prevented it. But He has an exact time for when our application would go through. And He also wants to teach us to rely on Him and trust Him.
But it doesn't hurt to pray for a speedy process from here on out! We hope to have all our paperwork done by the end of the year. Thanks for praying!
Friday, October 8, 2010
Honestly...
Honestly, lately I have not been motivated to get much work done on the adoption. Rather than thinking about the child, I am thinking about all the endless amount of paperwork we have to do. I get overwhelmed. I know there is an orphan waiting for us to bring them home, and I am so eager to parent them, but it seems like there is the obstacle of paperwork in the way.
There are many things that God is teaching me through this, but here is one reminder I had yesterday: I need to be faithful with little first, before God will entrust me to be faithful with much. Luke 16:10 says,
"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much."
And Mathew 25:21 says,
"His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.'"
For me, this means that I need to be faithful to get the paperwork done in a timely manner. How can God see me as being faithful to parent a child when I am not faithful with this work? How can I expect myself to work harder when a child comes, if I can't work hard now in the meantime? I understand that not every parent feels like they are completely faithful and ready before a child comes into their lives, and that is where God's grace comes in. He gives us grace to be faithful in spite of our weakness and failures. Praise God for His grace!
And here is another verse, I Corinthians 10:31:
"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."
So, I can do endless amounts of paperwork "to the glory of God"? Yes! Everything we do should be done to the glory of God, including paperwork and parenting! In the long periods of waiting for information about a child, even waiting can be done to the glory of God!
So, I will "press on" (Phil 3:14) to complete our dossier. In fact, God was gracious to me today, and I was able to get a bunch of forms filled out and letters written. I pray that in the end of the getting all the paperwork done, God can say to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much." And even more so, I pray He says the same after my children have grown into, prayerfully, God-fearing adults.
What are you doing to the glory of God? Would God say that you are faithful with the little things right now?
Just some thoughts to think about, and that are good for me to ask myself.
Friday, October 1, 2010
A Little Encouragement
I was recently encouraged by post of another family who is adopting. They are adopting from Rwanda, which is just north of Burundi, and also has a similar make-up of people and history as Burundi. Her post expresses how easy it is to despair and believe lies in the midst of waiting, during the adoption process. So, want to share the encouraging thoughts with you.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2010
Thanks to Alison (no really, that's her name too!) for the post at her blog Embraced By Grace.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2010
Crossing the Valley
On October 31, 2009, I stepped into our local FedEx office and handed the clerk five and a half months of eagerness, determination, and hope wrapped up in a two-inch-thick folder. Six weeks later, when my computer screen confirmed that folder’s arrival in Kigali , Rwanda
That was a mountaintop moment. “Gotcha Day” will be another. But in between these mountains lies a deep valley known as Waiting, and you can’t move from one peak to another without passing that way.
Waiting is a place of diverse terrain, sometimes dark and despairing, other times beautiful and serene. From a distance the valley appears calm, even stagnant. But all who travel there will tell you that Waiting is a battleground, and the enemy’s name is Deceit.
Deceit whispers many lies in the ears of travelers, some of which are cleverly disguised to sound like wisdom, hope, or noble conviction. The key to a successful journey is recognizing those lies for what they are, and listening for Truth’s response.
Following is a partial transcript of this traveler’s ongoing battle with Deceit in the Valley of Waiting
1. “Harmless Distraction,” a.k.a. Wasting Time
Deceit whispers: Waiting doesn’t have to be so hard. Distract yourself—watch more television, keep your calendar full, make lots of plans. Time will pass more quickly if you’re too busy to think.
Truth responds: “…suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope…”(Romans 5:3b-4). There is pain in Waiting, but also great reward. Instead of burying yourself in distraction, choose to be still. Allow hours of stillness to open your eyes to hidden stains of pride in your thought life, your fear of surrender, lack of faith, and desire for praise from others. Choose stillness, and you will be better able to discern the voice of Him who leads you.
2. “Conviction,” a.k.a. Self-Righteousness
Deceit whispers: Vacations, new cars, eating out…those people obviously aren’t losing sleep over the orphans of the world. The money for their daily trip to Starbucks could go a long way toward your adoption expenses…
Truth responds: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3) Do you have food in your pantry? Have “leftovers” ever been a phenomenon in your home? Cease your complaints and comparisons, and beware of your misdirected pride in having less than some. Frugality is wise, but it doesn’t make you holy. Neither does adopting make you holy. Surrender your pride and echo the prayer of the repentant heart, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
3. “Optimism,” a.k.a. Idealizing the Future
Deceit whispers: Waiting is the hardest part of adoption. Everything will be better when your baby is home.
Truth responds: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). You dream of holding your little one close, rocking him to sleep, soothing every cry and loving away every fear. Are you doing this with the children you already have? Are you cherishing your husband, family, and friends…or are you losing ground to selfishness and pride? Rather than dreaming of a brighter future, devote yourself to loving others better today.
4. “Staying Informed,” a.k.a. Looking for Hope in All the Wrong Places:
Deceit whispers: Spend more time reading blogs, scouring chat groups, listening for rumors. The more information you can find, the better you’ll feel.
Truth responds: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows”(James 1:17). Rumors are shifting shadows. Even the most sincere promises from trustworthy friends are shifting shadows. There is only one unchanging source of hope, and your adoption timeline rests in His hands alone.
5. “Realism,” a.k.a. Being a Victim
Deceit whispers: This wait is eternal, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re helpless, totally at the mercy of a foreign government.
Truth responds: “When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who know my way” (Psalm 142:3). You are not waiting on Rwanda
Remember, fellow travelers: Deceit’s end-game is confusion and discouragement. The enemy may not be able to prevent us from crossing the valley, but he can lead us down dangerous paths that bypass the many beauties of Waiting. Be vigilant, and remember that no matter what the enemy whispers in your ear, one thing is certain—Truth always has an answer. So as you walk, consume Truth, speak Truth, meditate upon Truth. Keep your eyes on the Word of Truth, for “your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105).
Until we meet on the mountaintop…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)