Received my Homestudy...Waiting to file i800a!

Well this is a busy week regarding the adoption process.
The funny thing with this process is, I can sit here for months with nothing to do. Then all of a sudden when the agency calls to tell me my Homestudy is ready (for example), then I have to drop everything else and the next step takes top priority in our family.  Luckily for us this is spring break!  No school!

So Monday morning I chatted with the folks at LAN about picking up the notarized copies of my Homestudy that afternoon.  I first took the agency homestudy payment to the bank (around US$1850). It took me a while to find the bank, as it wasn't where the bank's website indicated.  I had to drive a bit, and the bank was off the side of the road in a very crowded, dusty, trash-filled part of town. Yikes.  While in the bank the electricity kept turning off and on, everyone was staring at me, and I literally felt like I was about to have a nervous breakdown.  I was very much outside my comfort zone with that much money in hand!  Thankfully we made it out safely!  (Sometimes here in Nairobi I feel like I am in the middle of a movie. I keep looking around for video cameras.  Is this real?)

So then I hired a driver, secured the kids with our household helper, and took off down the road toward the agency to collect my papers.  I was supposed to be there between 3:30-4:00.  At 3:15, while driving toward their office, LAN called to tell me my homestudy wasn't ready for pickup after all.  Folks, I lost it.  I just completely lost all mental faculties. I was crying so hard.  (Apparently it was my mistake.  Apparently she had told me she would call me first to make sure it would be ready at 3:30pm.  Sorry, English is my first language.  Sometimes I miss things over the phone.  What I recall from the conversation was that they would call me at 2:30 if something came up.  Which they didn't.  Whatever.  Time means something completely different here.)

The lady on the line asked if I could just come the next day to pick it up. I realize she has no idea the effort it takes me to do anything in this foreign country.  Cause that's what I am here: a foreigner.  Nothing is familiar to me.  Nothing is easy for me. Not even driving two miles down the road.  Not even sending an email.

So I went back home completely broken and devastated and tired of obstacles.  Exhausted and sick of obstacles.  And exhausted from crying so much.  I asked my husband if we should just get pregnant and give up on the adoption.  Yes, that's how upset I felt. So I drove the kids to Planet Yogurt and stuffed my face with chocolate yogurt with M&Ms on top (even though I'm fasting sugar for Lent. Yikes!).  Then I got a phone call from a dear friend.  She reminded me of who is the author of obstacles.  She told me that I am a strong woman, and that maybe we were chosen for this particular child because someone else might have given up much sooner.  And that's exactly the word I needed.

So the homestudy folks canceled my appointment and rescheduled for the next day.  Big deal, right?  But this has now been a 13 month process for us.  This is the hardest thing I have ever done.  I'm still so scared that toward the end we won't be able to finish the process in time, and we'll have to leave the country without our baby.  So we will just keep pursuing and trying to get it done the fastest that we can.

I keep saying that this requires a Miracle in every step of the process from here on out.  So, Jesus, we are depending on You!

CAS is brilliant!

I am so impressed with my State-side agency, Carolina Adoption Services.

Dang, they are efficient!  Little Angels emailed them a copy of our final homestudy last week, and the Program Director at CAS only spent one day reviewing and making revisions/corrections.  That makes me happy.

So CAS sent the revision back to LAN, and now we wait for LAN to print it and notarize it.

Then LAN will need to return these documents to CAS (I wonder if it's by email or mail??):

-           the notarized homestudy with LAN's agency license attached,

-           verification of completion of 10 hours of Hague-compliant education,

-           a copy of the completed Homestudy Certification form, 

-           and the completed Community Resource Study.

After CAS recieves these documents from LAN, they will issue me a homestudy approval letter.  This approval letter must be included with my i800a application along with the notarized homestudy, our fingerprints, and a check for the fee.  So I can't mail the i800a yet!  But we are getting closer!

Homestudy Draft Appointment

Yesterday we visited our agency for our homestudy draft appointment.
Thankfully the sweet staff had already emailed me the draft so I could make my corrections on the soft copy.

They said they accepted all the changes I made.  There were just a few weird wordings for things that I changed.

For instance, Kevin and I are both lawyers and we enjoy debating topics (politics, religion, etc.) but they wrote that we enjoy fighting.  

Major difference!!!  So things like that I had to change.  Otherwise, it was fine.

Now we just await the Director's signature & notarization, then we can attach it to our i800a application and mail it!

Getting Documents Together

So excited, I received an email back from an agency in the States that works with the agencies in Kenya.

They laid out the entire process for me. Unfortunately the process starts with the homestudy, so clearly I cannot do that right now.

In the meantime, though, I can be gathering all the certified and notarized documents that I will need for the I800A form.

Those will take a while to obtain, so at least I can do a little leg work on that now.

Here is a photo I found of the I800A form on someone else's adoption blog. Wowee!

(found on this site where she documented her timeline adopting from China)