Wow! So we got our US immigration clearance about 3 weeks ahead of schedule (thanks to our local Congressman's office)! We are so excited! Actually, I am still in a bit of shock... We had a nice evening last night, we went out to eat, registered at Babies R Us and then came home to find our clearance in the mail! I thought Aaron was pulling my leg when we he told me there was an envelope from US immigration.
So here's the scoop. In order to finish our dossier we need a copy of our home study agencies license (Lutheran Social Services). Sounds easy right? Of course not! They have a license of course, but it expired in December. Don't worry, they submitted their paper work for renewal back in November, but guess who has to renew it.... DUN DUN DOOOOOON: DCFS!!! The bane of our adoption process. They are the local child services org. that can't get ANYTHING done in timely manner (or take seriously child abuse notifications, but that's a whole separate teacher issue that I won't go into). So it's January and Lutheran Social Services still doesn't have their new license.
I've emailed our placement agency to find out if we can use the expired one in our dossier, since it was still valid when they were doing and completed our home study. We shall see. If that works then here is the timeline of what's to come:
-Monday 1/10: get expired license from Lutheran Social Services
-Tuesday 1/11: Aaron takes off work to go to Chicago to get license apostilled
-Tuesday afternoon: finish photocopying our dossier and overnight it to Portland OR
-Wednesday 1/12: Agency in Portland receives and reviews our dossier
-Fingers crossed they send it ASAP to Washington D.C. to get authenticated
-A courier hand delivers it in D.C. to get it authenticated and then hand carries it to the Ethiopian Embassy
-Ethiopian government accepts it and we become a waiting family
-Some unknown amount of months later we get a referral of a child (could be anywhere from 2-9 months)
-4-6 weeks later we travel to Ethiopia for court
-4-6 weeks after that we can bring Sophie home!
Please continue to pray for each little step. Especially this license hiccup we are dealing with currently!
of course praying with rejoicing (sure there's scripture about that, but can't remember it at the moment). Sophie is so worth the wait...eager to meet her and grateful to share this process with you. Yay!!!!
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