Last week, I sent off our dossier to be authenticated in Washington D.C.  I also sent CHI our certified copies of the dossier that same day.  CHI received them on Monday.  Caring Hands in D.C. received the dossier Friday.  On Tuesday, I got a call from Caring Hands saying that the dossier was going to go back to CHI.  On Wednesday, I found out CHI had it and today, it all got sent to Ethiopia!  Now it really is out of our hands, as well as our agency’s hands.  It’s soon to be in the hands of the Ethiopian government and lawyer for CHI.  We are still hoping for a December court date and are guessing it will be January when we travel to pick the boys up!

Besides focusing on the bowling fundraiser and silent auction, which by the way- we really need to sell some tickets- we will be waiting for a court date.  We should have that in 2-3 weeks I hope!  That will be a good day- to know the date we will be waiting for this whole time…to know the boys are officially ours!

Thank you again for your support and prayers! - Brooke, Rick, and Evan

Over and out until we hear of a court date!

Today was the day!   The dossier is in the mail to be authenticated in D.C. and then it will go back to CHI and finally on to Ethiopia.  We are wondering how long it will be before the dossier is in Ethiopia and how long it will take until we hear when the day of our court date will be.  We are hoping a few weeks or less.  It will be nice to know when the date will be for the court date because once the boys pass court (which they almost always do), they will be legally ours that day!  Then it will be a matter of weeks after that until we travel to pick the boys up.  We are hoping that the court date is no later than the end of the year, God willing.

The other two certified copies of the dossier were sent to CHI today as well. Everything is now out of our hands and in the hands of the government and agency.  Please pray for a speedy delivery and court date!

We are going to have to focus all our efforts on fundraising now, especially the bolwing event!   We really need  to sell tickets.  So please, mark your calendars for Saturday, November 29th if you are in town.  You can bowl anytime between noon and 9 p.m. (3 games and shoe rental) for $10.  I have the tickets available now!

Also, we are acquiring some silent auction items, but could use many more!  If you have an item to donate, a basket, etc.  that would be great!  If you’d like to help us hit up businesses, that would be great too!  We have a letter and a flyer ready to go!

Thank you for your support and your prayers!

Hopefully the next blog entry will be telling you that we have a court date!!  Can’t wait!

Wow! 

Today we got our offical referral via mail, which will be a nice keepsake for our boys someday.  We also got our I-171H approval from USCIS!!!!  This means we can send our dossier off on Monday or Tuesday to be authenticated in Washington.  That won’t take long and then it will go to CHI and finally to Ethiopia.  Once it is in Ethiopia, we can get a court date!  We are praying for a December date.  It sure would be awesome to travel right after Christmas to get them.  But, we’ll see!  Just had to share the good news.  Thanks again for your prayers and support.  Now it’s time to work on this bowling event and sell tickets and get silent auction items!

So today during recess, I checked my school voicemail.  It was one of the Ethiopian program coordinators from CHI telling us our referral papers were ready!  I called her back and she was excited to hear from me and told me I’d have an email with the referral paperwork in my email today and that we’d receive the original copy via mail in a few days! 

This means we have our OFFICIAL referral for the boys!  Upon reading the referral, we learned a great deal more about the boys than we had previously been told, but it’s a good thing to know.  We learned that their mother has passed away (most likely from child birth/child birth complications) and that their father is still alive and that they have older siblings (we don’t know their names, gender, or ages though).  We hope that there is a chance we could maybe meet the dad and siblings when we travel, but who knows!

We also learned that they have real African names.  So, we will use their real names (first and last) as their middle names and keep Elijah and Jonah as their first names.  We also found out that Elijah is about 7 lbs. 9 oz and Jonah is about 9 lbs.  We are glad they are growing, but Elijah still is underweight…so please pray for him to continue growing.  It’s weird to think that they are about 3 months old and that Elijah weighs about what Evan weighed when he was born.

Their birthday is July 15th!  They are healthy and described as sociable (both of them), and funny (Jonah).  They have good relationships with their caregivers.  They tested negative for Hep B and HIV and they have O positive blood, like me!  The only issue was that Elijah has mild congenital chest stridors, which means that when a stethoscope is put on his chest, the doctor can hear noises, much like wheezing sounds.  They say it’s mild and that he does not need to be treated for this.  Please pray that he heals and outgrows this.

It was exciting to learn more and to have this day finally come!  Where do we go from here you say?   Well, our dossier (the boat load of paperwork) is done.  We are just waiting on our I-171H approval from US customs and immigration (Milwaukee office).   Once we get this approval in the mail, we can send our dossier to Washington to be authenticated.  It then goes to CHI and then to Ethiopia to be translated and scrutinized.  They then assign you a court date, which allows the children to be ours legally.  You usually travel 2-6 weeks after the court date (as long as you passed court) to pick the children up and bring them home.  We are still shooting for December-February, but really thinking it would be great to pick them up over our 2 week Christmas break…what a holiday blessing that would be!  We’ll see.  Soon (once our dossier gets mailed) we will be playing the waiting game and it is no longer in our hands.  Pray for a quick process.

For the time being, we need to focus on raising money for the travel expenses because now that we have a referral, we have to pay CHI the final fee and it is going to almost completely drain our funds.  So, if you could help us out by doing one or a few of the following, that would be great!

*Buy tickets from us for our ”Bowling to Bring Home Elijah and Jonah” fundraiser.  This will be Saturday, November 29th at Delavan Lanes.  You get 3 games of bowling and shoes for $10 ($7 of this goes towards our adoption).  You can bowl anytime between noon and 9 p.m.  We will also have a silent auction and a quilt raffle.

*Prepare a basket for our silent auction or donate an item/gift card/certificate.

*Help us go to local businesses in our area or yours (we have a letter and flyer for you to give out if you’d like to help us with this…just let us know) to get donated items/certificates for our silent auction.

Thank you for your continued support, prayers, and love.  It is all falling into place…what a joyous day!