One Year Later

It was exactly one year ago today, on a cold January 3rd morning, when we knew our family would be expanding to include the adorable, dark-haired, spunky child featured all over these pages.

As the dust settles on another hectic holiday season, we've been quietly reflecting on all that 2017 has meant to us and all that it has taught us.  And even though Jenny is still so far away, she somehow seems closer than ever.  It's only a matter of God's time.  Soon we will board a plane to Eastern Europe.  Until that invitation comes, however, we want to reflect on this journey and thank all who have personally been touched by it.

January 2017 - It began when we read an article by our new bestie, Crystal Kupper.  Crystal and her family have become dear friends, sharing holidays, birthdays, and rejoicing in every milestone in our adoption journey.  We can't wait for Jenny to meet her "Auntie Crystal" - the woman, the mentor, the legend.  We submit a "Letter of Intent" to adopt Jenny and begin the long, arduous process of completing a homestudy.

April 2017 -  With an almost-completed homestudy in our pockets, we get the news that Jenny is able to be adopted by an American family and we are on our way to being approved for her!  This was huge news that came after a halt was placed on all international adoptions from Jenny's country. An exception was made for her since she's considered "difficult to place" due to her respiratory condition.

May 2017 - We go public with our news and confuse quite a few people by stating that Vivien is going to become a "little sister!"  We are more than overwhelmed by the love and support of our friends and family, many of whom have also been touched by adoption and fostering in some way.  We become sponges, soaking up advice and well-wishes.  Our fundraising efforts will top well over $5,000 by the end of the calendar year - a testament to God's provision along this expensive and uncertain path forged by faith. 

Summer 2017 - Paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork.  We are busy obtaining fingerprints, birth certificates, and blood samples (literally) to submit our dossier to Jenny's country.  By the middle of September, every necessary document, certified twice over, is en route to the adoption agency in Jenny's country.  We are also blessed by numerous fundraising efforts, from LuLaRoe to yardsales.

 


October 2017 - Jenny's country submits her medical information, birth certificate and other court documents to us in an official referral.  Of course, we say YES to this referral and quickly apply to USCIS to begin the process to obtain a VISA for her.  We also learn quite a bit more about her medical condition, current living arrangements, and custodial history.  We connect with the international adoption department at CHOP as well as their pulmonology department in order to prepare for her arrival in our family.  We also complete a 9 week adoption course called Empowered to Connect which equips us with strategies to parent a child from a hard place.

December 2017 - The US has approved Jenny's VISA and the file is forwarded to the central authority in Jenny's country for final approval.  All of our i's are dotted and our t's are crossed.  Now we wait, and we pray, and we prepare for the journey to bring Jenny home.

UPDATE: Home Study Complete & USCIS Application in the mail!

First of all, thank you to everyone who has been following this journey with us.  We appreciate your prayers and your encouragement.  Many of you have asked for an update on where we are in the journey, and honestly, there really hasn't been any progress on the path.  UNTIL NOW!

The Etter Home Study:  ✓✓✓Complete!✓✓✓

Our Home Study has been finalized and is in our hands!  Not only that, but less than 12 hours after receiving the notarized home study, we have slipped it, along with our I-800-A "Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country" to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), into the (hopefully) capable hands of the United States Postal Service.

Now, we wait for USCIS to tell us when and where we need to go to be fingerprinted for the third time, and with any luck,  we'll have their approval within a month!

In the meantime,  we continue to work on getting all of the documents, notaries, and seals for our dossier.  We each had to get some more bloodwork done, and our Birth Certificates are floating around somewhere in limbo between various state capitals and our house.  Oh, and our second sets of fingerprints have been laying on someone's desk at the FBI for about a month now.   (We're getting worried about this poor FBI agent because clearly he or she is on some sort of extended leave of absence sitting on a serene beach in Hawaii watching the sunset.  Or worse - perhaps he went AWOL and no one knows what happened to him or his case files and so no one has any idea we even submitted our fingerprints!  Or maybe he just spilled coffee all over the prints and is too embarrassed to tell us.  Whatever the case, we forgive you, Mr. FBI Agent!  Just hurry up!) 

At any rate, please continue to pray over these documents and the people who need to process them for us.   We know it's all in God's perfect timing,  and while our journey is far from over,  we rejoice in knowing he just lifted us and Jenny to a giant leap forward!

✓

Overwhelmed

Last week, we were overwhelmed in multiple ways.

We finally got a checklist of everything we need to do to submit our final adoption application to Jenny's country.  This is called the "dossier".  And let me tell you:  the requirements are staggering. Even for me, a certified type-A stage manager and self-professed administrative guru who thrives on deadlines, color-coding paperwork, and re-organizing her daughter's toy room on a Friday night...just for fun.

Previously I made a joke about how there's no morning sickness with adoption, but the paper cuts are horrible.  Well, it was a joke.  Now it's a reality.

Adoption Paperwork is Serious Business!

We showed you a checklist of our Home Study requirements (copies of tax returns, credit card statements, pet vaccinations, medical exam forms, and proofs of health, home, life, and car insurances just to name a few).  Our Home Study makes up just a fraction of our dossier!

Plus, when you're dealing with international governments, it's not good enough for official documents to be simply notarized.  In order for our dossier to be submitted to Jenny's country, we need to have everything in it apostilled.  Basically, all of our notaries have to be notarized.  The state has to verify that the notary, or seal in the case of our birth and marriage certificates, is actually legit.

We are currently in the process of obtaining original birth and marriage certificates and then we'll submit them to the state to be apostilled, or authenticated.  This process can take many weeks (after all, don't forget that we are dealing with government entities here).  We've also just sent our second (of three) sets of fingerprints off to the FBI so they can issue official letters saying neither of us have records, and then those letters will need to be sent back to Washington DC in order for them to be apostilled.   Are you following?

If you're praying for us, please pray that God's hand would be on each of these documents, through the mail, onto the desk and into the hands of the person authenticating them, and then back through the mail to us and into our dossier.

On the flip side, Justin and I were also overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and support from our friends and family.  Ever since we made the announcement about Jenny, we have received nothing but encouragement.  We know people are praying over every aspect of this situation.  We feel your prayers.

Every year that we've been married, we have hosted a Memorial Day picnic.  It's only right to kick off summer by roasting marshmallows for s'mores out by the fire pit in our backyard.

This year, even though  the weather was on the dreary side, we had a packed house with 30+ aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends crammed into our modest house while Justin grilled hot dogs and hamburgers outside on the grill.

As I stood around our kitchen island with my aunts and uncles, I was overwhelmed with the questions and interest that everyone showed for Jenny and our journey.  I know they can't wait to meet her and I know she's joining a very large extended family that will love and cherish her as one of their own.

We do feel buried...under a giant mass of paperwork.  "Inundated" feels like an understatement right now.  But we are NOT completely defeated!  We've got this.  Why?

"God is able to make all grace abound to [us], so that having all sufficiency in everything, [we] may have an abundance in every good deed." (2 Corinthians 9:8 NASB)

One Step Back

On Jan 18th we received news that Jenny's country, although part of the Hague Convention, had put a ban on all international adoptions.  Because her country is a Convention country, we knew that the ban would have to be temporary.  We knew the Ministry would eventually allow children to be adopted by families abroad once more, but we didn't know when and under what circumstances.

Apparently, a few years ago, a little girl had been adopted from Jenny's country and some bad things happened.  We aren't sure exactly what happened, but it was bad enough for the country to instill a ban on all adoptions from other countries.

Rumors began flying all over social media about the situation.  We remained optimistic, however, since Jenny is considered "difficult to place" because of her disability.  It was our understanding, from our placing agency, that children considered difficult to place (ie those with a certificate of disability or children in large sibling groups) would eventually be eligible for international adoption once more.  The concern was that all of the children had to be re-classified for this eligibility.  And that could take months!

Justin and I were certain God wanted Jenny to be an Etter.  This was His plan.  We were just doing what He wanted us to do.  So, with no approval from the Adoption Center in Jenny's country, and no guarantee that Jenny would ever be eligible to be adopted by us, we bowed our heads once more, took a leap of faith, and dove headfirst into our Home Study.

The Home Study process, as I've mentioned before, is where you pay a social worker to completely and utterly invade your privacy, dig up old skeletons, and air your dirty laundry.

Our Home Study Checklist

Our Home Study would cost us about 1/7th of our entire estimated adoption expenses.  So, moving forward with it at this point with no approvals was akin to putting a down payment on a boat without an anchor.  But we trusted God.  When you're obeying Him, you're never wrong.

We started the Home Study process on Jan 20.  As of April 21, we've completed all of our requirements in the checklist above.  Ok, God...now we wait.  

Two Steps Forward

To say that God's hand has been in this story from the beginning is an understatement. Day after day, and every step of the way, I am continually amazed at how HE is working. This journey is all to HIS glory!

On Dec 28, 2016, one day after we donated toward the cost of adoption for Jenny and 11 “Other Angels” on Reece’s Rainbow, we inquired about adopting her ourselves. When we found out what country she was from, our jaws dropped. My uncle’s wife, my Aunt Stella, is not only from the same country, but speaks the language to about 80% fluency. God, are you trying to tell us something?

After prayerful consideration and being completely confident that God wanted us to move forward, on Jan 3, 2017, we submitted our application to adopt Jenny to the placing agency in America. The very next day we heard from the representative at the placing agency who then shared additional information and videos of Jenny with us. She was confident that our application would be approved and told us that we should start working on our letter to Jenny’s country stating why we were the perfect family for her. Our official approval to move forward came on Jan 6 and on Jan 9 we submitted our Letter of Intent to adopt Jenny.

In the meantime, we began looking for an agency to perform our Home Study. The home study is an integral part of the adoption process where you pay a complete stranger to come into your home, critique your current child safety standards, and ask privacy-violating questions I wouldn't even discuss with my mother. The point of the home study is to let the world know that you'll be a good family (financially, emotionally, physically, psychologically, etc) to the adopted child. (Funny
how no one checked with us before Vivien was born.)

On Jan 11, we finalized our application with our home study agency.  The entire home study would take about 3-4 months, so we wanted to get started right away.

On Jan 18, we heard from the adoption agency in Jenny's country.  They had a question about how we planned to care for her.  See, both I and my husband work full-time.  Jenny's country prefers that one parent be stay-at-home.  We explained, through the placing agency, how both of our jobs allow flexible schedules, ample time off, and work-from-home days, and how our bio daughter is currently cared for at home during the day by her Grams.

Also, on Jan 18, we got some devastating news that would remind us of God's sovereignty and timing:  Jenny's country put a temporary ban on all international adoptions.