Judging by the number of times I’ve been asked, many are wondering WHAT in the world is going on with our adoption plans.
I haven’t had much to answer, since until a few days ago we were just in the waiting loop.
We’re actually still in the waiting loop (and will be all year, in case you’re wondering… adoption is basically like the process of moving from one waiting room to another.) BUT several of the sets of papers we’ve been waiting on are here – my birth certificate had to be ordered, I must have lost it somewhere in the move and name change paperwork when I got married. And our home study arrived in the mail today. Woo Hoo!!
We’ve been in contact with our babies’ home, and will ship our home study, along with some other paperwork (all of which I’ll have to get notarized in the next few days.) From that point, we’ll wait to be invited for our first visit (at which time we’ll serve at the babies’ home, get to know the children there, prayerfully be matched with our future Meyer, and file the legal guardianship paperwork in the Ugandan courts.) We really have no idea how long that wait will be – it could be as long as six months, or pretty fast (since there are not many families interested in toddler boys.) After that first visit, we’ll wait to be assigned a court date – again, that wait could be long or short, there is no telling. We also will be waiting at that point for approval from homeland security to immigrate our new Meyer back to the states after we are granted legal guardianship, which reportedly takes 6-10 weeks.
So here are the next steps for us…
- Pray pray pray pray pray. It is reassuring to me that financially and logistically, we are in a position that enforces trust: If God is not in this thing, it is NOT happening. We TRUST His timing, we TRUST His heart. And there is the reality that since we are feeling led to not adopt a baby – our child will be between 2-4 likely – that child is already born, likely living without a mommy and daddy, possibly with health concerns. Help me Jesus.
- Continue raising the prayer support/financial support that we need. In addition to needing the Body to pray with us for our little Meyer-let out there: It will be several hundred dollars to send our paperwork to Uganda… $600 to file for USCIS… $3-4K for the first trip to Uganda, assuming it’s both Matt & I. I’d really LOVE to not go alone. And Luke really wants to come, but we just don’t know if we can afford it. Plus on that first trip, we’ll begin paying the legal fees, our attorney, to file in court etc. (that will be several thousand as well.) Again: Help me, Jesus.
- Assuming we have the $600 (I think we do, thanks to GENEROUS donations to our fund, plus my etsy sales), we will file with the USCIS for approval to adopt. We’ll need approval from them before we can get a visa to bring our child (once we are granted legal guardianship) home to Nebraska.
- In the next few days, I’ll get the last few pieces of paper notarized, and we’ll ship our paperwork to Uganda.
