Dossier Sent!

I really can't believe that today is the day...a HUGE milestone in our process. Today is the day our dossier is being sent to Ethiopia. On 6/28 I overnighted all the documents to an organization called The Assistant Stork. They are a courier service that hand delivers your documents to the Dept of State and The Ethiopian Embassy and gets them all authenticated. This process typically takes a few weeks. On Monday (a week later) I decided I would pull up the tracking #'s just to see where they were and found out they were delivered to our agency the prior Friday, July 2nd! So in 1.5 days, Assistant Stork got everything authenticated and back to our agency. I was blown away. If you're going through the adoption process and need a courier service, I highly recommend them! So Adoption Associates did what they needed to do on their end to prepare them some more and shipped everything off to ET today! This means we are officially "in waiting" for our baby girl! I really can't believe how quick and smooth this process has gone so far...maybe it's a sign of what is yet to come??(-:
Ps. Check back for a pic of all those documents(-: They involved so much work that I had to take a picture-haha!

Got the Golden Ticket!!!!

On Friday just minutes before we headed off for a weekend of camping with the kiddos, we got our mail and found our "Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition" -In clearer terms, we were approved by US Citizenship & Immigration Services to adopt a baby from Ethiopia! So this means tomorrow a.m. I will anxiously run off to get this approval notarized, head over to the Office of the Great Seal to get ALL of our dossier documents "sealed", stop off at 5/3rd and pick up a money order, write a few checks, head to the Postal Connection to make copies and at last overnight ALL of our dossier paperwork to "The Assistant Stork" which is a courier service that will hand carry our documents to the Dept of State to be authenticated, then onto the Ethiopian Embassy to be authenticated, then back to Adoption Associates, who will then turn around and submit our COMPLETED dossier to Ethiopia. We will then officially be put on the waiting list (10-12months) for our baby girl! Whew! Did I loose you in there? I'm sure I'll have to go back through my list in the morning. Anyways, in short, we're one step closer to meeting baby Nieuwenhuis and we couldn't be more excited!

Brings me to my knees....

"I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation. I look at my parents and ask, where were they during the civil rights movement? I look at my grandparents and ask, what were they doing when the holocaust in Europe was occurring with regard to the Jews, and why didn't they speak up? And when we think of our great, great, great-grandparents, we think how could they have sat by and allowed slavery to exist? And I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 years from now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?"


~Rich Stearns, President of World Vision~

There Is No Me Without You

Most of you that know me well, know that I am not a reader. (unless it's a celebrity gossip magazine with lots of pictures- if you can even call that reading(-:) However, from the very beginning of our adoption process, there was one book mentioned over and over as a "must read". My first thoughts were "Wow, this book sounds like it's made a big impact on many of its readers. I wish I could read a book!" Ok, so it wasn't that I couldn't read, I just dreaded the thought of reading an entire book to completion. But in reality, I deep down admired those book worms that would take the time to sit down w/ a good book. I loved the fact that you could learn SO much from reading, so much so that I would actually buy books that I "wanted" to read and give them to Luke to read on a long trip. Ha!

So defeating all odds, I was on a mission to buy this book and read it. Luke just chuckled. (probably thinking it was another book I was going to try to get him to read and then translate it to me) Well, I bought it and started to read it. I did have a hard time following along in the beginning-(it may have been the fact that I was on the beach and constantly interrupted with "Mommy, will you build a sandcastle with me or Mommy, I'm hungry...you get the picture) It was alot of history and statistics. But, just as I was confirming the reason why I never read, it started to grab my attention. I found myself with that book in my face almost every night, soaring through the pages and sobbing through many of them. I have never read a book that so profoundly touched my heart. (ok, so I haven't read a ton of books, but trust me, it was compelling)

Without giving it all away and allowing you to read it(-:, it is a story of Haregewoin Teferra, a middle class Ethiopian woman who found herself at the heart of a global health crisis- AIDS. After losing her husband and daughter and experiencing great grief, she reluctantly agreed to take in two of Addis Ababa's thousands of AIDS orphans. There was literally NO place for them to go-they were completely shunned. Soon children of all ages began to appear at her tin walled compound. She eventually started an orphanage and began facilitating adoptions to homes all over the world.

The story was extremely educational, heartbreaking and inspirational all at the same time. Each time I would pick it up, I was re-affirmed on our decision to adopt from Ethiopia. At heart, it was a book about children and parents, wherever they may be, however they may find eachother. I would handsdown recommend this book to everyone to read. And because of it, you may just find this "non reader" with another book in her hand at the beach this summer(-:

Fingerprinting Appointment......

WHAT!? Today I received our biometrics appt from the USCIS. It's scheduled for 6/15. Our caseworker said we now hold the record for the fastest processing at USCIS. Must be slow over there this time of year(-: We were also informed by our agency that we should try showing up at an earlier date. They will typically get you right in and it will knock a few weeks off. We'll give it a try.

Receipt....already?

Yesterday I was quite shocked to get a paper document from the Dept of Homeland Security acknowledging that they received our paperwork and request for orphan approval. I was told it would be a min. of 2-3 weeks before I got this and it was 9 days. But before we get too excited, this is only a notification stating they received it. It will be another 2-3 weeks before we get an appt for fingerprinting and another 2-3 weeks before our actual approval comes in the mail. However, our agency informed us to write our check out for the wrong amt, so that could delay us a few more weeks. But, the good news is that it's there and in the midst of being processed.

On the dossier front, I spent a day this week running around getting bloodwork done, local police clearances, passport photos, letters typed, etc. On Monday, we will have it all notarized and most all dossier items checked off our list! I remember the day I received the dossier packet and how overwhelming it felt. But slowly we've been chipping away at it and it's hard to believe that info is almost all gathered! Once we receive our approval from USCIS, we can throw it in with our dossier paperwork, get it all sealed and sent off right away.(of course there are many small steps in between there, but who cares about the details, right? haha)

Today we also received some more news.......get this......I told you a few weeks ago that our agency signed on with a new orphanage. Well today we received word that they have added 2 more! AAI is now working with 5 orphanages throughout Addis & Awassa. There are at least two other agencies working with these same ones as well, but the referral list is being knocked down as I write this. They are very careful about the timeframes they give people in waiting(they don't want to open the door to any false hope-especially when it involves a child)but I was actually told this week that our initial approx. 10-12 month wait (once our dossier is submitted) will probably be shorter. AAHHH! I sat there and thought about this after she told me and my heart started to race and all sort of thoughts ran through my mind. She actually may be born right around now-what if she's being abandoned today? What if she's starving right now? What if medical complications are beginning to set in? What if her needs aren't being met? What if her mother's needs aren't being met? But Becket is still a baby- I thought he'd be at least 2 1/2. Where will she sleep if it is earlier than we expected? We still have lots of research and reading to do, there is no way we'd be prepared in 6-8 months! AND THEN IT HIT ME...this is only a glimpse into our adoption story. And like many that have come before us, it really is a ride. And for Missy Planner over here, it offers up so many lessons.
1) We need to "pray without ceasing" for our little girl (and all the orphans for that matter)-PLEASE join us in this!
2)Our "perfect plan" is not always His.
3)This thing called adoption demands that we constantly release ourselves and place our complete and utter trust in Him!

Sure, part of it stresses me out, but if I'm outright honest, I have butterflies just thinking about it.

USCIS Paperwork....CHECK!

So yesterday we attended the trans-racial training that is required for all families adopting from another race. It was very eye opening and the excercises really made us think about how we are going to incorporate Ethiopian culture into our family and expose our little girl and our other children to people of other colors. We really live in a "white world" here in West Michigan-our schools are predominately white, our church is predominately white, our doctors/dentists are predominately white, our friends are predominately white and the list goes on. We really never thought about it before, because we feel comfortable in our surroundings. Maybe she won't feel as comfortable standing out. We are now brainstorming on how we can become a more multi-cultural family-for all of our benefit, not just our ET girl. There were two adult speakers-one was an African American lady adopted into an all white dutch family back in 1968 when it was illegal to adopt an African American child. (Can you even believe that was a law!?) The other was a Korean lady adopted into an all white dutch family...surprise! Their stories were so inspiring and taught us some critical things. It was great to get a broadened perspective from people who have "lived" it. The common thread was the pure greatfulness these women felt towards their adoptive Mom & Dad-especially when they took a lot of flack for it.

At the same time, we were able to bring home our completed homestudy last night. We read it as soon as we got home and it was literally like a flashback of our entire lives! It was as if we were reading about someone else(-: Today, I anxiously drove over to the fed-x store and overnighted the homestudy along with all supporting documentation to the US Citizenship & Immigration offices. Now, we will wait. We've been told it will be a few weeks before we get acknowledgement of our paperwork, a few more weeks before we get a fingerprinting appt, and another month before we receive our actual approval. Once we get our "golden ticket" (aka: orphan visa approval I-171-H) we will be onto the most daunting portion of the paperwork- our dossier!