Dossier Completed!

Some of the paperwork for our dossier.  

We are so glad to be able to say our dossier is complete! It ended up being a little more challenging than we had anticipated. Mostly because of some odd views Uganda has on notarized documents. Long story short, we had to have everything notarized by a notary public with a commission expiration date that was at least two years away. This became especially challenging when we needed to find a notary to bring to our doctors office! We are thankful for various connections and wonderful people in our lives that helped us out!

So, that is behind us and God has proved his faithfulness again and again throughout. We sent the massive pile of documents to our agency to be reviewed. We received an email last week letting us know that everything looks good! Then last Friday our agency emailed us to let us know that we are on the waiting list. We are number 15!!!! There are 30 people in the program, so we are dead center. We still do not have a very specific timeline, it just depends on so many things. Our agency is saying 9 months give or take.  

What's next in the process? Mostly, we wait for a referral. As far as how long that will take is anyone's guess. Their goal is to match children with the best possible family. We are open to one or two children, up to age three. Also, we are open to a number of special/medical needs. We are praying that 2013 will be the year that we bring our little one home!

It is very exciting that the next step in the process is receiving a photo of our son or daughter!! That will be an amazing day. Most of my friends think we will be adopting a daughter. If you ask Aaron, he is convinced that he will have a little brother AND a little sister. I told him that he can pray to God about it. His response was, "I will ask God and he gonna say yes". Oh boy! He actually does pray about it, and if God says yes we are going to have our hands full!

The fee to accept a referral and be matched with our child is $4500. Thanks to our amazing family and friends we have enough to accept a referral! What a relief. After we accept a referral, our agency will get us a court date. Once we have a court date, we will travel to Uganda to meet our little one!

Here is where we're at with the finances:

Donations: $11,127

Fundraisers (coffee, hats, garage sale): $1,378

Total raised: $12,505

Out of pocket: $5819

Adoption cost is estimated at $27,000+

Praise God!!

Check out this mysterious donation: 

The note says, "Don't give up on your adoption, be encouraged!"

We checked our mail today and this was in our box! It's rubber banded to junk mail. Our neighborhood has locked mail boxes. No one would have access to our box. It has to be from our mail carrier. We have no idea how they knew we are adopting. So crazy!

Also, the adoption tax credit passed! This is great news. We are still trying to figure out what exactly it means for our adoption. We know it will help, we just aren't sure to what extent. We have some grants/programs to apply for now that our dossier is finished. I can't believe how close we are to having all of the funding we need! 

Thank you, thank you to our family and friends. This adoption WOULD NOT 

be possible without your generosity. We simply do not have the words to express our gratitude.

Things to pray for:

• God's glory be shown through our lives and this process to everyone involved
• That our hearts would be prepared to meet the needs of a grieving child or children
• The the hearts of the kiddo(s) would be protected and be prepared for a new family
• The courts favor toward us and being granted guardianship of our child or children.
• All of the details that will go into traveling to Uganda. The timing, help with Aaron, someone to take care of our house/animals and time away from work for John.
• The rest of the finances, mostly in-country expenses and attorney fees.