GOLDEN TICKET DAY!!!!!!!!

Wow!! We received the official "golden ticket" today from Immigration that states that we are fit to adopt. They are forwarding our paperwork to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia! Yeah!! I pulled up from bringing the kids home from school and Wade was walking back from the mailbox all smiles holding the letter up to show me that he was holding the offiicial letter. It was good to see Wade smiling over something with the turmoil at work and with the market day after day lately! Anyway, back to the happy stuff-I couldn't believe it was the actual document since I was expecing it to come from Fed. Ex or in a more official way than our regular mailbox that we hardly ever seem to find time to frequent. Anyway, it was 3:59 and our agency closes at 4:00 so I immediately got on the phone to let them know that we received the I171-H today and they said to fax it over tomorrow.

This is all so timely since our agency emailed waiting families this week. They said that the director just got back from the orphanages in Ethiopia recently and they are getting ready to give child referrals maybe next week!! They are waiting on medical reports and testings that the children have had. We couldn't get a referral without the I171-H, but now we can if they have a match for us. The immigration form only took 3 weeks to process and they usually take 6-10 weeks. God is good and we are so excited to move forward. I have definitely been nesting lately! The garage is cleaned, basement is clean, tonight I was scrubbing and vacuuming the inside of the car, the office that has been a catch-all paper mess is finally clean after about a year of me saying I would clean it, and I have been busy mucking out the kids' rooms. We have to find room for two other little ones-SMILE!!

We will keep you updated with any new news that we get. Please continue to pray for our country, economy, and elections at this time and praise, praise, praise we are moving along!!

Shonda

WE'RE ON THE LIST!!!!!

As of today at about 12:06 p.m. we were officially put on the waiting list at Intenational Adoption Network. I watched them physically write our name on the whiteboard in the back of their office.
Whew-We are done with all of this time-consuming paperwork for awhile!!!!! We are #3 on the list for a toddler girl and then whatever sibling or un-related chld that they might refer to us between the ages of 1-5. We are continuing to pray that God's hand would be in the referral for the ages and gender that he would think is best for our family.

Today was a busy day of picking up our homestudy from the Secretary of State. It was certified and all of our other documents were certified for our dossier last week. Then Wade and I raced to the Immigration Office to hand in our paperwork to file our I600A form that allows us to adopt out of the country. Our appointment was at 10:30 and we walked in at 10:29 after a few wrong turns on the way by me, of course Wade was standing outside waiting for me. We then drove to another office to be fingerprinted and then I drove our homestudy to the International Agency to get us on the waiting list. It is so nice that we are using a local agency that allows me to drive the documents rather than wait on mail or delivery service, sorry mom!!

So now we wait to get approval back from Immigration. This can take anywhere from 5-10 weeks. In the meantime we also wait for a child referral. While we are waiting Wade and I each have to complete 24 required hours of education, the fun never stops. Tomorrow night we attend our first class.

It was an exciting day for us, but not as exciting as it could have been because of the weak market, almost bittersweet. This week has been very, very stressful for Wade. We are excited to be at this point in the adoption, but with today's market activity we can't help but wonder if addding two is such a good idea. The devil is working or God is testing us, we'll find our soon enough. Please continue to pray for our country during these difficult days with the market and leading up to the election.

Thanks for all of your support and prayers!!
Shonda

Moving Along

I wanted to give a quick update, maybe just to make myself feel better by seeing that the process is unfolding for us. Our homestudy is finally done-almost!! One more addition of when and where we were married by the social worker and it will be complete. It is amazing how a small detail like this takes time to get added as the homestudy gets tossed back and forth between the local and international agencies for pre-approval.

Today our short-version of the home study was turned into the state of Colorado for approval. We will wait only 4-5 business days to get it back. Tomorrow I am going to the Secretary of State to get our dossier documents certified. We should get these back on Thursday. When the homestudy is completely official I can get it certified as well.

Next Wed. we have an appt. to get fingerprinted to submit our I600A form for Immigration. It will take 5-10 weeks to get this Immigration Form returned to us. I have learned that this is called the "Golden Ticket"so we will be anxious to get it back. The "Golden Ticket" officially states that we are cleared for International Adoption.

I realize this might be boring details to you, but to us it is a matter of checking one thing after another off the list. It also leads us a few steps closer to bringing our sweet children home. I am so excited I can't stand it!

Please pray that these next steps will go smoothly. Pray that our immigration comes back closer to 5 weeks rather than 10. Next week we can be put on the wait list with our agency if our dossier is approved!! Yeah!! Thanks for your prayers.
Shonda

Agency Switch

I realize that I am writing another blog before I even sent out the first blog. I am still trying to figure out how to add photos and to add contacts to this blog system. I will get it all figured out now. The kids are in school as of today and now I can get busy with the endless list of tasks that I have been putting off all summer. The kids and I enjoyed summer break so much and now we are all ready to get back to business!!

Now an update on the adoption front! In the last blog I mentioned working with CHSFS in Minnesota. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto an international adoption agency right here in Denver! Wade and I were so excited to find this agency. We feel God's leading again! We were discouraged with the wait time that CHSFS was stressing to us and the next day I read another blog that listed this Denver agency. I quickly googled it and got on the phone. We spoke to this new agency multiple times. We talked to many, many references that have successfully adopted through this them. After prayer, phone calls, and discussion we have decided to switch to this Colorado agency. They are telling us that the wait time to go and pick up the children would be 9-12 months from start to finish-YEAH!! We are continuing to move forward. Our social worker is finally home from a two week vacation and I spoke to her today. She is going to write our report tomorrow!

Please pray that everything will continue to go smoothly. There has been some sensitivity among some Ethiopians lately. In the past they were very eager to have children adopted from their country. Recently, there has been some frowning upon by Ethiopians concerning whites that are coming to "rescue" their orphans and pull them out of Ethiopia. We are beginning to learn that anything can quickly change with adoption. We are praying that adoption relations would continue to be inviting, healthy, and smooth between Ethiopia and other countries.

Shonda

The Journey Begins

So begins our journey to Ethiopia! I know we have surprised many of you with our news regarding the decision to adopt from Ethiopia. Adoption is a subject that has come up in the past at our house but has been put to bed quickly without much discussion. In the past it was more of a fleeing thought. Like most other things that have come our way in the past we felt that we were hit quickly and furiously with the idea of adopting from Ethiopia just in the past couple of months. So if you know Wade and I very well, you know that we pray and move pretty quickly if God gives us the green light. We feel that he has given us the green light by his small whisperings recently regarding adoption.

This past year we have followed a family in our small group through a lenghty adoption with upsets. In March they finally came home with their precious little girl from Guatamala. This Spring I met a mom at the rec. center who was preparing to leave for Ethiopia with her husband to adopt two children. In April Faith did a missions week in Denver and attached quickly to a little girl in a Salvation Army daycare that was African American. Faith wanted to bring her home. In June our family took a class at church titled "Red Card" about children at risk around the world. Blake had been telling us that he plans to adopt someday. He wondered if we would ever consider it. He met the children that I mentioned above from Ethiopia. He kept saying how cute they were and how he would like a sister or brother like them. I love looking back now as to how God was planting the seeds and lining up these events that we were not even aware of. When you ask Bryce about it he just lifts his hands and says, "I don't know, but I would like a brother to play with because Blake is mean!" (smile)

So we have begun the journey. We have applied to a Home Study group in Colorado and we have applied to an International Adoption agency in Minnesota. We have been burying ourselves in paperwork for the past 6 weeks, getting fingerprinted, background checks done in CO and IA, etc. We have met with our social worker twice and she is getting ready to write up our homestudy report. We are learing a lot of new terms like "dossier" which is the file that we are currently compiling paperwork for. This file of paperwork is very official with original birth certificates, police reports, physical exams, and many other documents that need to be notarized and signed by the Sec. of State. This packet when finished will get forwarded to the Ethiopian Embassy. We are getting familiar with the whole process but are still very confused about the official paperwork that needs to be done to make this all happen.

I decided to start our blog now since we already would like to have you begin praying for us. We are in the final steps of meeting with the social worker and as I said she is getting ready to write up our report to be sent to the International Adoption Agency that I will refer a lot to. They are called Children's Home Society and Family Services (CHSFS). My hang-up with adopting from Ethiopia is that I am concerned about a black child living alone in our white family, white community, and predominately white school. Wade and I have prayed about this a lot. We have decided to apply for adopting TWO children. I know this is a very big decision!! We are feeling like this is the right one, but as we are getting into the process more CHSFS has told us that adopting two children may make our wait for a referral even longer. The referral could take up to 12 months from when we turn in our dosier packet which is a ways off yet. Once we accept a referral of children we wait about 4 months to travel to get the children. CHSFS does not split up siblings so it is a waiting game to get a referral that matches our request. Deep down we would love to adopt twins around 3-4 years with one being a female. Now we can't be that specific with the adoption agency. They tell us that the wait would be even longer. They are recommending us to put down two young children ages 0-5, either gender. We just need prayer that God's hand would be in this. We would really prefer to not go back to the "baby stage" since Bryce is already 6 years old. We would like the process to go smoothly and quickly and for their to not be a large age gap in our family. Please pray for us if you have a chance.

I also wanted to share why we decided on Ethiopia. We have many personal reasons that seemed to be promptings from God and there really wasn't a question as to where we would adopt from. It was more like the idea of Ethiopia was first and then adoption was next. Then we researched Ethiopia and found that it required only one trip for a week from Wade and I to travel there to pick up the children. Other countries might require multiple trips there, stays for multiple weeks, and even sometimes residence. Obviously, this doesn't work because of Wade's job and 3 little things named Faith, Blake, and Bryce. So that also made Ethiopia realistic for us. We also found out that only certain countries have partnerships with the U.S. regaring adoption and Ethiopia seems to work relatively well with the U.S. I am also reading a book called There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene. It is an eye-opening book about the history of Ethiopia and the staggering numbers of poverty, orphans, and AIDS victims in Ethiopia. Here are a couple of statistics to share with you.

1 in 14 women dies during childbirth in Ethiopia.
1 in 10 children dies before their first birthday in Ethiopia.
Half of the kids in Ethiopia never attend school.
In Africa as of 2006 13 million children have been orphaned by AIDS.
12 million of these children are in Sub-Sahara Africa (25% of those live in Nigerian and Ethiopia)
44% of Ethiopia is under 15 years------That is staggering to me.

These are just a few statistics to share. Wade and I do not look at the yearning to adopt as a charity case. We are so excited to expand our family and share ourselves with a couple of children across the world that have had their world turned upside down. My heart just grieves over their losses. One night recently after tucking my kids into bed I had tears in my eyes. It occurred to me that there are orphans all over the world each day that have no one to tuck them in at night and to say I love you! This sadness and hopelessness devastates me. In the book that I am reading their are photos and a true story about a 4 year girl old that watched both parents die and then she had to care for her 2 year old sister. She and her sister were finally found, left at a compound for an African women to care for them. At the compound she was cared for by this African women that had opened her home to orphans. When this little girl, Mekeda, arrived 30 other orphans were also living in the women's home to be cared for by just this widow. I could go on, but that story gives us an idea of the tragedy that is occurring around the world.

So anyway I know this will be my longest blog and I am sorry to be so wordy. Our excitement is mounting daily already and as I said I am already feeling the pains of adoption and the waiting game that it will be. Thank you for your support and prayers.

I will add updates as they happen. You can follow our blog at www.5plus2makes7.blogspot.com


Shonda