Back on Track

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

Polskie Doświadczenia

In the beginning of August, Wally and I  had the opportunity to go to Pulaski, WI to attend a Polish workshop.  We learned about some of the history, traditions, geography, current political and economic climate, and we got to try a sampling of Polish treats.  Poland has such a rich history, and Wally especially enjoyed that.  I liked learning more about the traditions that we can bring home and incorporate into our family.  As most of you know, it is very important to Wally and I to share our little's Polish heritage with them.  This workshop provided Wally and I with a great overview and jumping off point.

We couldn't leave Pulaski without stopping at the Polish bakery - Smurawa's Country Bakery.  There we bought traditional Polish pastries called punchki (picture 1) and some homemade pierogies.  They were delish! After the workshop and the bakery, Wally and I were inspired to try our hand at some Polish baking.  We decided to make kolaczki (picture 2 & 3).  We made one batch with raspberry filling and another with a pecan filling.  They were pretty darn good if I do say so myself. They quickly disappeared when I took some to work, so I think my co-workers would agree. 

Wally and I will begin learning Polish this month.  We know that we probably won't be fluent, but we at least want to be conversational.  It is important to us that we can continue speaking Polish to our little once they are home.

Once again, we want to thank all of you for your continued support and prayers.  We will be updating you on the progress of our home study soon.

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord.” – Psalm 127

Help Us Pack The Lanes For The Little

We have event dates!  We will be having 2 bowling fundraisers - 1 in Rockford, IL and 1 in Madison, WI.  See details for each below. 

Rockford Moonlight Bowling Fundraiser
     When: Saturday, October 5th - 9:30pm
     Where: Forest Hills Lanes, 7742 Forest Hills Road, Loves Park, IL

     Price: Adults: $25 in advance / $30 day of; Children 10 and under: $15 in advance / $20 day

                  of; Children under 3 are free
     Includes: 3 games of Bowling, Shoes, Nachos and a Beer Ticket
                (Must be 21+ for alcohol, soda ticket available for minors)
     Extras: 50 / 50 Raffle and Silent Auction

Madison Bowling Fundraiser
     When: Saturday, October 26th - 12pm - 4pm
     Where: Badger Bowl, 506 E. Badger Road, Madison, WI

     Price: Adults: $25 in advance / $30 day of; Children 10 and under: $17 in advance / $20 day

                  of; Children under 3 are free
     Includes: 3 Games of Bowling, Shoes, Unlimited Pizza Buffet with Bread Sticks and Salad. 

                     One non-alcoholic beverage. Candy Bar for the kids!
     Extras: 50 / 50 Raffle, Silent Auction and Kid’s Halloween Costume Contest

 

100% of all proceeds will go to the adoption costs.

 

If you are interested in attending either of these events, please email me at afrancis1024@gmail.com or comment below, and I will send you a registration form.  Please invite your friends and family! 

 

Thank you for all of your prayers and support.  We hope to see you there!

Hurry Up & Wait!

I am sorry that it has been so long since our last post, but we have been super busy!

Our home visit went really well on the 22nd. Most likely we won't see our social worker again until after we are home with the little(s).  We are still waiting for our FBI clearance to come in and my record check from IL.  Other than that, our social worker has everything she needs to complete the write up.  Our primary agency is very detailed (which we love), and very specific regarding the home study requirements.  Our local agency will be working on the write up this month, and it should be  sent to our primary agency for review by the end of this month.  Our primary agency will send back any changes, if necessary, or the approved study.  Our social worker thinks we can expect to have the approved home study in our hands by mid-September.  WooHoo!!  Once we have our approved home study, we can send in our I800A.  That is the final step in completing our dossier.

We have all of our documents ready for our dossier except for the immigration clearance.  The I800A that we have to send in to the USCIS is an application to get approval to bring a child into the US.   Once this is sent in, we will receive an appointment date to go to the Homeland Security building in Milwaukee to have our biometrics done.  Once that is done, we wait to receive our approval.  Unfortunately, we have heard that this can be a long process - possibly up to 6 months.  As soon as we have that we will have all of our documents apostilled, and send our dossier to our primary agency for review.  Once everything is approved, it will be on its way to Poland.  Poland will then review our dossier, and once they approve it, we will officially be "waiting" for our little(s)!  We are praying this will all be done before the end of the year.

We have also fulfilled all of our adoption education requirements, and then some.  So at this point, everything is kind of out of our hands.  The hours at my second job have picked up quite a bit, and we are busy planning for the fundraising events (more to come on that).  Other than that, there isn't much we can do for the adoption.

On a side note, I have to share with you that I had quite the surprise at work on Thursday.  A group of co-workers from my department got a bunch of puzzle pieces, decorated them, and surprised me with them during a meeting. Any of you that know me well, know that it is quite difficult to surprise me, so I was very impressed by that.  You can tell that they put so much time and thought into these pieces.  It was so sweet!

As always, Wally and I want to thank you for your continued prayers and support.  We ask that you keep the prayers coming.  Lord knows we will need strength and patience to get through all of this "waiting"!

I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!

Matthew 25:40

 

Full Speed Ahead

It has been a crazy couple of weeks in the Francis house.  After choosing our home study agency, we have been moving at full speed ahead!  We have all but a few of the documents collected and completed for the home study. We met with the social worker assigned to our home study last Thursday.  The appointment was long, but went well - we definitely chose the right agency!  We will have a home visit on Monday, July 22nd.  Needless to say, we will be spending the next week tidying up the house and ensuring the rest of our paperwork is ready to go.  We did receive our dossier instructions, but haven't had much time to dive into that as we have been so focused on the home study.  We have learned that there is some overlap, so that helps.  We will be digging deeper into that very soon.  We have completed the required coursework for our primary agency.  We have also selected how we will complete our remaining hours for the state of WI and are already working on that.  These courses have been very eye-opening for Wally and I, and we truly appreciate the knowledge we are gaining from them.

We are both super excited and super nervous that everything seems to be moving along so quickly.  We are excited because we cannot wait to get our little(s) home and have them in our arms.  However, we are nervous because we were planning for more time to secure our financing to bring them home.  We trust that God's timing is perfect, and everything will happen as it should.

That being said, we would like to thank my mom, and her friend Brenda for having a fundraising sale for us.  We also want to thank everyone who donated items, and everyone who came out to shop! The puzzle pieces are going well, so thank you to everyone who purchased those.  We still have some left, so please let me know if you are interested.

Wally and I are so blessed to have all of the support and love from our friends and family.  It is easy to see that we are not the only ones anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little(s)!  I can assure  you that Wally and I are working diligently on making this happen as soon as we can.  Please keep the prayers coming!

In you the orphan finds mercy.

Hosea 14:3

And We're Off...

Since our last post, we have been ankle deep in paperwork and tasks.  Starting next week, we will be knee deep! 

Our agency sent us a list to get started on while we were selecting our home study agency and waiting on our dossier instructions.  We have started gathering our references, ordered copies of our birth certificates and marriage certificate, and had our fingerprints done and sent in to the FBI.  Selecting our home study agency wasn’t quite as easy as we had hoped.  Our agency recommended a person/agency for our area to conduct the home study.  After communicating with them, Wally and I didn’t feel that they were the right fit for us.  This person is going to be spending a lot of time dissecting our lives – I think getting off on the right foot is pretty important.  We ended up reconnecting with an agency that we had originally considered as our primary agency, and has worked with our primary agency in the past.  After some very honest conversation with the director, we knew it was the agency for us.  Our home study packet is on its way and we will be getting started with that next week!  On top of that, our primary agency let us know that they will be sending out our dossier packet next week as well!  The paper chase has officially begun!

Wally and I are also required to do 18 hours each of adoption education courses.  We are doing 11 hours online through a program that our primary agency requested we use.  We will be working with our home study agency on the last seven.  Wally and I just started our classes and are really enjoying them.  Right now we are learning about bonding, attachment, and issues that can be expected from a child having been institutionalized. The courses offer lots of tips on overcoming and dealing with any issues that may occur.  We are actually looking forward to more classes!

 

Wally and I went to Polish Fest in Milwaukee last weekend!  We had so much fun exploring the cultural village, watching the dancing and taking in the music.  The food and beer were great too!  Of course I had to do some shopping while we were there.  We found a bilingual (english/polish) numbers book and a cute t-shirt (pictured below) for our little.  We can't wait until we can take them with us!

 

We can’t believe how quickly everything seems to be going.  I know at some point I will be complaining about nothing happening as fast as I would like, so right now I will enjoy the rapid pace!  Thank you all for the continued support and prayers.  We are so lucky to have so many people celebrating our adoption with us!

FAQs

Why did we decide to adopt?
I will do my best to make a long story short here.  At the age of 16 I was told that I would never be able to have children.  Of course at that age, my response was “fine, I don’t want kids anyways”.  About 6 months before Wally & I were married I went to a new doctor that told me that I would probably be able to have babies.  After hearing that I realized that the “fine, I don’t want kids anyways” thing was just a defense mechanism.  By the time we were married Wally and I were both excited to start a family, with some occasional hesitation on my part.  After trying for a couple of years without success we were referred to a fertility clinic. We had a treatment plan, but were both a little uneasy about it, and still weren’t convinced that was our path.  I managed to push off the treatments for a full year.  Even before starting treatments, we started talking about adoption – a little more and more each month.  Once we started treatments, which I HATED, God kept putting adoption on our hearts.  Everything went pretty good for the first couple of months, but didn’t result in a baby. The night before I went in for my 3^rd treatment, we just sat down and prayed really hard.  We told God that we really felt he was putting adoption on our hearts, but we wish he would make it clearer.  Ask and you shall receive!  I went in for my appointment and they couldn’t even finish the treatment – the drugs were doing the complete opposite of what they were supposed to do.  That was a very bittersweet moment.  We mourned the fact that we wouldn’t have a biological child, but we knew that our prayers had been answered and that we were being called to adopt. 

Why international/Poland?

When we first started this process we thought that we would be adopting an infant domestically.  After several months of research and lots of praying, we decided to go international.  A lot of factors were considered when choosing Poland.  We looked at program stability, healthcare of the orphans, requirements, and the process.  Ultimately we feel that God was telling us our child was in Poland.

What is the process?

We have just sent in our commitment contract to our agency.  Once they receive it, they will help us find an agency in WI to complete our home study, and will get us started on our dossier.  Our understanding is that the home study consists of adoption classes, meetings with a social worker, a home visit, and some paper chasing. I am certain there is more to it - we just won’t know until we get our packet.  The dossier is a more intense paper chase, fingerprinting, immigration clearance, and will include our home study report.  Once again, there is more to it than that, but we are still learning too!  Once our dossier is accepted by Poland, we will be officially on a waiting list for our little!  Waiting time varies, but on average will takes about 4-12 months after the dossier is accepted.  Once we receive a referral, we have 2 weeks to decide if we accept it.  After we accept it and Poland approves our acceptance, we will receive travel dates to go to Poland and meet our little.  On our first trip, we will only be there for about a week.  The reason for this visit is to meet the little, confirm our acceptance, and begin the adoption proceedings.  Then comes the part that I am dreading most – leaving without my little.  There will be about 2-4 months between our 1st and 2^nd trip.  Our 2^nd trip will be 4-6 weeks long.  This is for the bonding process, court dates, and the waiting period. Finally, after all of that, we will come home as a family!

How many children are you adopting?

We will be adopting 1-2 children.  We have told the agency that we are open to adopting a sibling set. 

Boy or Girl?

It will be a surprise!  We have opted to take either.

How old will they be?

They will be 1-3yrs old.  If they are referred to us at 1, they most likely won’t be home until 16-20 months.

Will they be healthy?

Yes, our child will be healthy.  Coming from an orphanage, it is to be expected that they will have some developmental delays.  Based on experiences that others have shared with us, they tend to overcome these delays within the first year of being home.  Wally and I are not concerned about this and look forward to playing with all of the fun developmental/educational toys!  Wally and I have shared with our agency that we are open to taking a child with some minor and/or correctible needs.  We were given the opportunity to indicate what we thought we can handle, and what we could not. We will not know what, if any needs our little will have until we receive our referral.  We know that whatever child God blesses us with will be perfect for our family!

Is it expensive?

Yes.  Wally and I knew that adoption was going to be expensive.  Seeing the agency numbers for the first time was a bit overwhelming, but seemed manageable.  After swallowing that number, we started adding in all of the other expenses such as time off work (I cannot use maternity leave), travel expenses, and the paper chase.  When it is all said and done, the number was much bigger than we had anticipated.  However, knowing this is what God is calling us to do, we know he will provide a way for us.
 
How can you afford it?
The cost is quite large, and as things were when we made the decision to adopt, we would not have been able to afford it.  We have made some changes in our lives such as me working a 2^nd job, budget reductions, going on a cash budget and saving our change.  Even with the changes we have made, it appears we will still fall short. To help cover the shortfall, we are doing a few different fundraisers.

·         Amazon Affiliate – If you order from Amazon, please use the Amazon Widget on the right side of this blog.  The same products at the same prices are available, but if you order using our widget a portion of your purchase will be donated to our adoption fund. Please share this with your friends and family!

·         Puzzle Pieces – We have purchased a large, blank puzzle and are selling the pieces for $10 each.  We can either write your name on it for you, or we are happy to send it to you so you can decorate your piece.  When the puzzle is complete, we will glue it, frame it, and hang it in the little’s room.  This way they can see all of the people that helped to bring them home.  If you are interested in a puzzle piece, please email me at afrancis1024@gmail.com.

·         Fundraising Events – We haven’t decided when, and we haven’t decided what kind of event, but we are planning to do one in Rockford, and one in the Madison area.  We are currently accepting donations for silent auction items for these events. Our hope is to create an event that can be repeated annually.  This first year all proceeds will go towards our adoption cost.  The years to follow, we would like to use the event to raise orphan awareness and the proceeds would go to another local family trying to adopt. We will keep you posted, so keep your eyes and ears open!

·         Fundraising Sale – My mom has been very hard at work collecting donations for a fundraising sale that she is having for us.  Wally & I would like to thank all of those who have donated their items and my mom for doing it.  We will post once she has decided on a date.

·         PayPal Donations – If you wish to make a donation, we have a donate button on the right side of this blog. 

Are you crazy?

Yes, we are indeed crazy!  Crazy in love with our child that we haven’t even met yet.  Yes, we understand that it is quite the process and very expensive.  However, there isn’t anything we wouldn’t do or pay to ensure our little is safe, happy, and HOME!!!

Thank you for your continued payers & support!