Christmas Time!!!

Every year at Christmas I tend to reflect on how fast life is flying by. I think about my childhood Christmases, the magic and wonder, how perfect those days were. They remain untouched in my memory, nothing can compare to those Seasons. Then, I tend to fast forward through my teen year Christmases, preferring not to dwell on them. They were so full of un-met longings and dashed hope, those days when I so desperately wanted Christmas to be what it was for me as a child. And it just wasn't, because it couldn't be. But, its when I get to the recent Christmas memories that it always strikes me: time is truly flying! Was it really 9 years ago that I was heading to Sweden after Christmas for Bible School? Or 6 years ago that I was in college? It's been 3 years since Aaron and I shared our first Christmas as a married couple. These years just come and go, and the seasons go faster and get more full. This Christmas, I can't help but think on the changes this upcoming year holds. Is it even possible that next Christmas, just a short year from now, we will be parents? After this Christmas, for every Christmas throughout our lives we will play the sacred role our parents hold in our lives to some child. Some child we don't even know yet, some child who is already out there, somewhere. Some child that already has a name, a face, ten fingers and toes, a smile, a laugh, and a future... With us.

Some Pictures of Christmas 2010:

Fingerprinting Date!

Just a quick update. Once we got our endorsement letter, all our info went to US immigration for clearance from them. This can take a long time, so we got out congressman involved right away. On Monday we received our fingerprinting date for US immigration clearance! This is a unique process, they simply give you a time and day that you have to show up for fingerprinting. If you don't show up you forfeit your application. We were blessed to receive a fingerprint appointment over Christmas break so we don't have to miss work to go! We are so excited and shocked to get to this step so quickly after being held up for sooooo long! Thank you to our congressman Don Manzullo and his wonderful staff.... We will keep you all posted!

ENDORSEMENT LETTER!!!!!

Ok, so.... Our state clearances came very quickly, but we were still waiting on DCFS clearance (Department of child/foster services). They had already cleared us before, but since we were for-going the foster licence we needed the clearance in writing from them again. They have been the ones holding us up this entire time! Our social worker (whom we adore) decided to call the one lady in the state of IL who writes the endorsement letters for every adoptive family in IL to tell her the situation. She agreed to write our endorsement letter without the DCFS clearance in writing!!! YAY! This process usually takes over a month since it's just one lady who does these. But ours only took 2 weeks from the time we sent in all the stuff.

Here's the crazy part: the day our endorsement letter came, I got up and thought to myself "once our endorsement letter does get here I will need a few things photocopied so we can send all of the paperwork directly to US immigration" (which is the next step in the process). Even though I knew our endorsement letter wasn't expected for at least another 2 weeks, I decided to bring that paperwork to my school with me and photocopy it that day. Later that afternoon I got a call from our social worker saying the endorsement letter was here (she was SHOCKED it was there so soon), and could I possibly get that paperwork to her ASAP so she could send everything to immigration? I already had the paperwork copied and in my car as I was talking to her and was able to drive directly to her office! WOW GOD MOMENT!!!

So our next step is US immigration, which I hear is taking 2-3 months to clear. My plan is to get our local congressman on it asap, he has helped me before with government processing that is oh so slow! We are also finishing up our dossier, which will be complete very soon!

Please pray:
For immigration to clear as quickly as possible
For my nerves, I fret about the tiniest details, like broken staples which I will write about in my next blog!

Much Love!!!

Latest news

Hi!
Well there have been a few developments in adoption stuff! We were waiting on clearance from DCFS for almost 2 months. I finally asked if we could get our endorsement letter from the state without going through DCFS.... so we are re-ordering all our clearances and then Lutheran Social Services will be taking care of it all!

Also: Adoption Avenues (our agency in Portland OR) has changed around their Ethiopia program! They are now using orphanages from the Ethiopian country side that are not connected directly with any other agency besides ours. Once a child is identified for a family, the child will be moved to a foster home in Addis Ababa (the capitol) until the adoption is finalized. This is great news because it will reduce average wait times from 15 months to 4 months!

So.... Please pray:
-That our clearances will come in quickly
-We can learn patience through all this!

Thanks!

Here are some pictures of the Nursery:

Introduction!

Hi! I'm sorta new at this blog thing, but I figured I should learn so that I can keep track of our adoption journey on the web too. This way our friends and family around the globe can keep track of the goings-on of the adoption as well. So far we are almost done with all the paperwork. Our social worker is finishing up writing our home study as I type this, and we're hoping maybe that can be sent out for state verification next week sometime! Unfortunately there is only one person in the state of IL that verifies these, so it can take up to 2 months! Once that comes back we can send our dossier to get authenticated by the US gov and finish up with the US immigration to get our visa to bring an orphaned child into the country. There is still lots to do! Here are a couple of prayer requests:

• That everything comes back from DCFS quickly so we can finish the home study
• That our home study gets verified quickly through the state 
• That I can finish up our dossier so that is ready to go

Click below to watch a video of the orphanage we will be adopting from in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!
Click here