Its a BIG DAY!

Today's the day we've been waiting for -- dossier submission day!! We got our documents back from Washington at 11:30, and by 12:15 I was officially handing them over to our agency. So, our wait for a referral begins today!!! I tried to get some indication from our coordiantor on how long the wait could be, and very "unofficially" she said it could be anywhere from four to six months. So, we're hoping we'll be matched with our child late October (or ealier?!?!). Thanks again for all of your prayers. Its a huge relief to have all of the paperwork finished and now we look forward to referall day!

Update

Just wanted to let everyone know that Caring Hands called us yesterday, and our documents are finished! They said that the Department of State reattached the cover sheet and they are "good as new"! We should get them back from FedEx today, and we're taking them straight to our agency. Yes...this time I made all of our copies BEFORE sending them to Washington, so we won't have another copy disaster. So, unless there's some FedEx delay, today will be the day that we formally submit our dossier!!

Caring Hands

I don't think I've ever been excited for Monday morning, but we've spent all weekend wondering what to do about our document disaster. We thought that, surely, either the Department of State or our adoption agency would have answers for us when they opened today. Well, the Department of State wouldn't return our calls and our adoption agency had never seen this happen before and couldn't give us a definitive answer. Rather than losing an entire day waiting for the Department of State to finally call us back, we contacted Caring Hands.

Caring Hands is the courier service that we used the shuttle our documents from place to place in Washington DC. Their primary job is NOT to answer international adoption questions. Their sole responsibility is to get documents from place to place in Washington. Honestly contacting them was a desperate attempt to get some idea of whether or not anyone has seen this happen before and we weren't getting answers from anyone else.

I just can't say enough about this WONDERFUL company. Not only did they reassure us that this happens frequently, but they told us that if we send them back our documents with the detached cover sheet, they would take it back to the Department of State to have it reattached free of charge! So...our documents are on they're way back to Washington via FedEx, and we are adding Caring Hands to our list of angels that have helped us along the way!

Copy Disaster

Just wanted to post quickly with good news & bad news (well...maybe bad news). The GOOD news is that our documents came back from Washington Friday afternoon and they were perfectly complete and ready to turn in to our agency. The BAD news is that when attempting to make copies, the authentication page that was so perfect binding our entire dossier together completely detached from our documents. Just when we thought we were finished....

We have a meeting with our agency tomorrow, and they're going to let us know what we need to do next. We are prepared mentally for this to be a big set-back for us, but we'll find out for sure tomorrow afternoon. Its been a rough weekend for us, but we're getting through it. Its all in God's hands, and we know that these set-backs are ensuring that our path meets up perfectly with the child that God has hand picked for us.

No More Documents!!

After 4-months & 2 days, a total of 287 hours of work & two road trips....we have completed all 87 pages of our dossier!! We just sent them all to Washington, DC for the U.S. Department of State & Ethiopian Embassy to authenticate. We're using a courier service in DC to hand deliver them to the right offices, and the service said we can expect to have them returned in approximately one week. After we get them back from DC, we'll officially submit them to our agency and then THE WAIT BEGINS!!

Terri

As you know, we had to recreate a few documents and send them to the Indiana Secretary of State for authentication. The last time we completed this step it took one week and one day. I Fed-Exed the new documents to Indy last Tuesday (June 1st), so (being the schedule driven, obsessive person that I am) I expected to get them back this past Wednesday. Well....no documents. My wonderful, level-headed, problem-solving husband decided that he would call the office this afternoon to check on the status.

At this time, I would like to introduce you to Terri. I have no idea what her last name is, what her title is, how long she's worked for the Sec. of State, but I do know that she absolutely went above and beyond to help us.

Terri is the woman that Mike spoke with at the Secretary of State's office who had the unfortunate job of informing us that they had no record of receiving our documents last Tuesday. That's right...you didn't misread that. Terri said that they didn't get our documents, and that's when I went into panic mode.

Again, my level-headed, problem-solving husband calmly called Fed-Ex who gave him the name of the individual who signed for our documents, and Mike called Terri back. Not only did Terri find this person and retrieve our documents, but she expedited them through the authentication process and shipped them out within an hour.

I know it probably sounds like she was just doing her job, but it was late on a Friday afternoon and she could have easily put this off until next week. Instead, Terri dropped everything, pulled some strings, and worked this all out for us so that we would have our documents first thing Monday morning. She was our angel today, so say an extra prayer of blessing for Ms. Terri!

Roller Coaster

Its been a little over a week since my last post, and there's been a lot of adoption activity going on (hence the reason for little time to post). After getting our USCIS approval, the only thing left to do was get a document authenticated by the Secretary of State in Michigan, and then our dossier was ready to send to Washington D.C.. We made the decision to drive to Lansing, Michigan to get it done as quickly as possible. So, after more than (14) hours of drive time, our documents were COMPLETE!

We sent them to our agency for one final review on Tuesday, and just heard back from them last night. The good news is that all of our documents are perfect! However, there's been a little set-back. There has been a staffing change in Ethiopia. The in-country director for our agency retired this week, and his name is on one of our documents. So, we have to recreate a document with the new director's name, resend it to the Indiana Secretary of State for authentication and then we'll be ready to send our complete dossier to U.S. Department of State & the Ethiopian Embassy for final authentication. Its definitely disappointing since we were SO CLOSE, but better that this happened now than after we sent everything to Ethiopia.

We're learning that International Adoption is like a roller-coaster --- full of ups and downs, twists and turns, moments that you just want to throw your hands up and scream (sometimes from fear and others from excitement), and we know that there's most likely another loop right around the corner.....but we also know that this ride will be completely worth it in the end!