Wow. Where to
begin? So much has happened since my
last post.
Let’s start with a little hiccup we encountered in
mid-September. We received an email from
our social worker about a paperwork problem she had encountered with other families. We found out that the WI Secretary of State
would not apostille the child abuse clearance forms as they were not
originals. The procedure for those
documents, as laid out by our primary agency, was to add an affidavit to the
back of the documents and have it notarized.
Just to be clear – EVERY document in our dossier must be
apostilled. No exceptions! Apostilled is just a fancy word for
authenticating – basically saying the document is legit. Anyways, we got in touch
with our primary agency and they suggested we get our documents in to be apostilled
ASAP. Wally and I had almost all of our
documents anyways, so we decided to give it whirl. Since we live near Madison, I was able to go
drop off our documents in person. My
friend Becky had to drive me because I was so nervous, and I seriously thought
I was going to get sick when I handed all of those documents over. So much so, that I had to inform the person
in the office. She laughed and guessed
that I was adopting. I must not be the
only one to have those feelings! She
reviewed my documents right in front of me and said everything looked good and
that I would get a call when they were done.
I felt pretty good about it, but knew I wouldn’t be able to rest easy
until I had them back. She called the
next morning to inform me they were done.
What? I thought that was going to
take a week! Feeling confident, I picked
up our documents, and everything, including our child abuse clearances (the
forms in question), were apostilled.
Praise the Lord! With all of the
ups and downs of adoption, it sure is nice when something just works out.
Meanwhile, Wally and I were still waiting to receive our
final home study. There were a couple of
documents that got missed, so there was a lot of back and forth with our
primary agency and social worker. It
seems like it took forever, but we FINALLY got it! What does that mean? Well, it means more “hurry up and wait”. Along with our home study, we received our
instructions for our I-800A. This
document will begin our process with USCIS (immigration). We got that filled out and sent in the next
day. Now we wait to get an appointment
at the Homeland Security Office in Milwaukee for our biometrics. After that we will receive our I -797 – the final
piece of our dossier. Once we have that,
we will get it apostilled and our dossier will be complete! It feels like we are getting close! Our hope is to have our dossier in Poland
before the end of the year. Please pray
this process goes smoothly. I will be
sure to keep you posted.
The love, support, and prayers that have been coming in from
all over are amazing. Thank you all so
much for being a part of our journey.
“The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled
with joy.” -Psalm 126:3
