Bittersweet Goodbye!!

Monday afternoon I took my first trip to the Secretary of State branch office in Springfield to get my 20 some documents authenticated. I got there at 2ish and by 4:30 they were complete. The good news was that all but one came back authenticated. The bad news, of course, was that one had an error on the notary section. The notary who notarized our I-171H put the current year as 2009, so I had to get it re-notarized with the correct year of 2008. I did this on Tuesday and then went back to Springfield to get it authenticated by the SOS. In the scheme of things that was a very minor hiccup. It could have been a lot worse!!!!!

Yesterday at around 4pm I said goodbye to our dossier at the FedEx store in Springfield. What a variety of emotions that I was feeling. I didn't want to let it go, but I certainly did not want to keep it either. It just seemed so weird to hand off almost 5 months of paperwork (not to mention the thousands of doallars that was required to compile them) to a complete stranger. Right now I am so glad to know they are almost in Virginia, and I am excited about what the future holds due to the perseverance and work that went into our dossier will produce. We are getting a CHILD!!!

The Best is Yet to Come!!

We were absolutely stunned last Friday to check the mail box and see that our I-171H had arrived. We are in total gratitude to God for having grace with us in that He is speeding our journey along. The last post I left, I titled "Godspeed", and I meant it as whatever God chooses as far as timing goes. From the title you would think I meant lightening speed, but I think God works a little slowly at times too. Godspeed is all I want. His perfect timing. As far as our I-171H goes, we certainly got the speedy timing!! This form was not supposed to come until March, and I was mentally preparing myself to turn in our dossier in at the end of March. Now it looks like we should be able to turn it in at the end of the week.... WOOO HOO!

Godspeed

We're getting a little closer every day. On December 27th we went to KC to the USCIS office to turn in our I-600A application and get fingerprinted. This is just about one of the last things we have to do (on our part) as far as paper work is concerned. We should hear back from the USCIS anywhere from 3-9 more weeks. We then will take all our documents to an office in Springfield where they will be authenticated. After we do that, off our dossier will go to McLean, VA where it will be authenticated by the federal government. That my friends (as far as I know) will complete our dossier. It will be shipped to Ethiopia, and we will begin the real wait for the referral of our child. Since the last time I wrote, Kevin and I decided not to request specifically for a female. We thought if God truely wanted us to have another daughter, then that's what we would get. Just in case God chooses for us a son, we have come up with the name Jude Baruk. Baruk is an Ethiopian name that Leoul was going to use for his own son, but never did. It means "blessing".