May 8, 2012

The Process

A lot of people ask the same questions when it comes to our adoption, so I thought I'd take a few minutes to give kind of an overview of what we will be doing, and our needs.

To adopt from the Country and region that we are adopting from the cost is roughly $40,000. You will see the total being raised on the side bar is only 35,000, that is due to us paying up front costs with savings etc. So we are trying to raise the rest. (and will still be adding to it as we go)

It also requires THREE trips. International travel is pretty expensive right now, so that contributes quite a bit to the costs.

Right now we are working on our home study, we are getting all the paperwork completed for that by this friday, we will then have our individual interviews, and the social worker will write up the home study.

We will then be preparing a ton of other paperwork for our Dossier. We have to have 4 sets total. The first and second set have a lot of the same things, the 3rd set is only a few papers, and the fourth set is one document.

We will be compiling our first set, which consists of medicals, marriage license, a whole bunch of forms signed with different agreements to have post placement visits, agree to what kind of child, etc. There are lost of forms, also a set of family pictures, fingerprints, the list goes on. This set will be completed, notarized, and then apostilled by the secretary of state. Which costs about $20 per page. (yikes!!) There are about 45 pages in the first set.

Once we have that set sent off to the country it will be translated, (another fee) and go through the channels there that will eventually get us a travel date. Our first trip is expected to be about a week long, and this is where we meet the child, begin visits, and sign the papers saying we want to adopt said child.

We then come home and send off our second set, (or if we can we will get it done with the first, since a lot of the documents are the same) we then wait for a court date. This is usually 2-3 months after the first trip, but we are hopefully if we can get the second set of papers done closely to the first that it will not be too long for a court date. The second trip is also expected to be about a week long (flight costs again, in country stay, driver fees, food etc) This is when we go to court before the judge and "plead our case" the judge decides whether or not we get to adopt the child, if it's a yes, the child is officially ours, name changes etc take place.

After the court trip there is a mandatory 30 day waiting period, after the 30 days we can go back, and get our boy. We have considered staying for the 30 days, but it would be too hard to leave the girls for that long. Also one parent may travel alone for the 3rd trip. Joey would prefer he go, instead of me by myself. I would love to go since I want to be there to bring him home. But we will see how the Lord provides. My staying would save money, and that is crucial!

SO there you have it...a big long crazy process, with a lot of bumps in the road. It will be so worth it, once we can get him home. Please pray with us, for the Lord to provide the funds we need, and for the process to go quickly and smoothly.

Keep Looking Up!

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