a longer wait...

today I was going to write with a smile on my face sharing a wonderful new pic I have of Peyton...

However today I write with frustration and low spirit. Just got our USCIS stuff returned to us in the mail. Somehow I sent them the wrong amt of money so they gave everything back. I have no idea how I managed to do that. It is so upsetting. So later today I will go re-overnight this to them. We are now adding another almost 3wks to the timeline!!! This might mess up everything!

I know God has a plan and he knows what is going on. I know his timing is perfect and his will is best. Yet, it is hard living in the unknown when it comes to rescuing your son and the ability to do so might come to an end because of govt workings.

We also had all our dossier papers notarized over the weekend. I just found out today that half of them need to be redone. We also need to now have 3 copies of something that before only needed 2 copies of. So we will be going through paperwork yet again! They also want some of the papers now ASAP, so we need to get them done and apostilled and shipped ASAP.

I am so tired of all this paperwork, so many legalities, it drives a person bonkers.

Pray that this time the USCIS stuff is right and goes through quickly, pray for favor! We are still unsure of what changes might take place in June in his country. Pray it stays open!!!!! We most likely will no longer be able to submit in June, more like July at the earliest. So instead of the summer, we will prolly not get him till the Fall :(

Anyway, i will go ahead and share the pic...




so ready to hug this precious boy!!!

Chrissy

Dropped a ball...

OK, well Erick has not heard back from his company yet regarding writing the letter, so keep praying about that...

on another note, just realized I dropped the ball on something and now we will have to wait longer. I thought we had everything (besides employment letter) done and ready to go. All my references were turning in their letters this week and we were just waiting for the SW to finish up the report. Once we had the letter and the report we could turn everything in to USCIS and get this show moving. We were hoping to do this no later than April 1. I am excited to say that my Social Worker just said she should have her first draft of our HS avail Wed!!! However, this ball dropping will now cause a delay.

The dropped ball involves state background check. Back in mid Feb when we got all our HS stuff, I did not get right on all the things in there. There was so much that was going on with the adoption and life in general that somehow some things got overlooked. Then at the end of Feb I realized I had not done much paperwork stuff in a while and that I needed to make sure to get whatever done that will take a while to process so that we dont end up waiting on something later. Well, at this time I realized we still needed to send in background check stuff and local fingerprint stuff. So I did that March 7th. I faxed in the form and placed it in the done pile. Later that week we had all our physical appts, fingerprints, and notary paperwork stuff going on. Life was so crazy that week that I never gave another thought to if the fax went through.

Well the other day I realized I never got a confirmation when I sent the fax. So I called yesterday to see if they ever got the forms. They did not!!! I refaxed right away but they still did not get them. For some reason our fax was not being picked up there. So today I mailed off the forms.

When I talked to my SW she says it will take like 2 WEEKS for that to come back!!!! ARGH!!! If I would have checked on it that wk I sent it, we would have it back and could turn everything in to USCIS either end of this wk or sometime next wk (as long as we get employment letter).

This now adds 2 wks to our timeline! We were thinking at normal rate we might get to submit dossier to country in mid June, but now it might be more like July. With the possibility of closure, this is not a good thing!

Please pray over this with us. Pray we get the letter we need and pray the background check gets processed quickly. Also pray that no other glitches come up. I know God knows what he is doing, and all timing will come together for his plan to come to pass. We are not freaking out, but are trusting in God. We are learning to let go and just do what we can when we can and leave it in God's hands.

Process updates & Prayer requests

We need some prayer for the adoption process. We found out this week that Peyton's country is thinking about changing up their adoption procedures and if they decide to do that it means closing down adoptions until everything gets fixed into the new system. This could be months or YEARS of kids not being able to go home!!! We need to get the dossier submitted before anything happens and then we can still be on this journey to get him. There is speculation this might happen this summer. Looking at a timeline I have thrown together for how our journey looks, we should be submitting in June and traveling within July-Sept. I am not sure if that is too late. We are being told to get things done ASAP so that we make sure to get submitted.

Tomorrow is our home visit for the home study. So pray for that as well. Our Social Worker thinks she should have our report finalized by the end of the month. So we should be able to turn in our home study and USCIS papers by April 1 hopefully. Then we have to wait on them to approve us to adopt. This usually takes at least 6 wks (so I have heard). They are allowing expediting of people adoption from this country right now due to all this speculation which is good, but I am not sure what that means for how much faster we can expect that approval to move along. Once we get approval we can mail in our dossier to the country but it has to be translated before submitted. I think this takes a couple weeks. Then they can submit it.

The changes the country wants to make are supposed to be good and better for everyone in the long run, but it just messes things up for the kids that are in certain stages of life for the time of the change. Pray that we are able to be submitted before they make any decisions. I can't imagine Peyton having to be there another few years!!! Pray that everything we need to do moves along quickly and smoothly.

Today was kind of hectic... we had a day of running errands and signing papers (all with 3 kids in tow). We had our local fingerprints done which went perfect but then we had county paper signing which the lady did wrong and we will have to go back another day. We also had some notaries done on some docs but a couple were done wrong so we will have to redo those as well. Right now it is okay for that to happen. But later it can mean time delays we can not afford. Pray we don't run into more problems as we continue. We had our physicals this week and should be picking those forms up early next week. The kids have to get some tests done as well, so they will go for those next wk. By the end of next week we should have everything we need done for this stage of the adoption.

Pray also for the fundraising efforts. We will be doing much more in the coming months so be looking for info on those. If our process gets expedited as needed, that is great but it also means raising funds quicker.

Thanks for your prayers and support

Chrissy

an update

Hello everyone... wow how cool that we have some money donated already! Thank you thank you! So yes, we have the donate box up and available now. We also have the grab button so anyone can help share Peyton on their blog or whatever to try to help us bring him home.

We have finally connected with our social worker and will meet for the first time on Thursday evening. We are also scheduling our medicals, getting our passports, and looking through the mounds of paperwork we have received for our Dossier and home study.

We will be planning a yard sale soon and will take any help or donations for that as well. Details to come. We also still have our Just Love Coffee fundraiser going. So buy some if you want it!

Please keep praying with us and sharing with others!