A REAL Update!

Things are actually progressing, really!  We just got the AMAZING news today that Claudia's country has approved us! 

So what does this mean?  It means that we are eligible to adopt a child from her country within a set of parameters (age and sex of the child to be adopted).  Of course Claudia is within these parameters.  Her country knows that we want to adopt her specifically so now we are waiting on our official referral for Claudia specifically.  According to our agency this could take 5-7wks (it takes a while to translate the documents).  But we are praying it goes more quickly (the approval of our dossier was about a month quicker than expected). 

Once we get the "official referral" we have 2 weeks to accept it.  Our plan is to review it and accept the referral imediately.  Once we accept the referral to Claudia we will need to fill out more paperwork, the USCIS I-800 form, which is the"Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative."  That is currently taking about 3 weeks to be approved.  The US gov. will submit out pre-approval to her country and then they will issue a letter authorizing that the legal adoption may take place which could take 2-3 weeks.  Once we have the letter, we can then get ready to travel!

Our hope and prayer remains that we will be in her country this fall and home before Christmas.  Her country shuts down for the holidays so if we cannot travel in the next few months, we may have to wait until next year to get her.  Please pray for smooth proceedings from here on out and specifically that she will be home this year.

We still need about $14,000 to get her home the majority of this money is travel expenses.  Please pray with us for God's continued provision financially.  Advocate and donate for us if you can. We still have T-shirts for sale as well as bracelets.  You can still purchase coffee to help us fund raise as well.

Baby girl, we are coming for you!  We don't want to miss any more moments with you.  No more birthdays or holidays alone.  You have grown so much since the first picture we saw of you, the picture that led us to you, we want to be with you to watch you grow.  You will be home soon!

Where we are now...

So many little updates and I have had so little time to post!

Ok, so the first thing is that Our sweet little Claudia just recently had her birthday.  Yes, our girl is now 3 years old!  Jason and I longed to be with her, to share her 3rd birthday with her but we are still a few months away from traveling.  Jason baked a nice yellow cake with chocolate frosting in honor of her birthday.  It was yummy!  We hope that her caretakers acknowledged her birthday and made it a special day for her.  God willing, that will be her last birthday without a mommy and daddy to love on her.  Who wants to help me start planning her 4th birthday party? 

We just received notice from our adoption agency that they have sent out our dossier to her country!  Ahh!  That sis so exciting, that means we had everything in the first time! Now I only hope that her country thinks so too!  It will take about 2 weeks for our paperwork to be translated and then it will be reviewed by her country.  After they review it, if they do not require any more information or paperwork from us, they will approve us for adoption and send us a referral for Claudia!  This could take 4-8 weeks.  Once we get our referral, we will have her complete social and medical history and we are hoping for more pictures (you can never have enough).  We have 2 weeks to accept the referral (of course we will).  BUT as soon as we accept, we will owe $3000 to her country.  We just sent our a check for $5400 and payed the $120 for our Apostilles so we are running low on funds and will need to raise $3000 in the next 5-8 weeks depending on how fast her country is.  We know that God will see us through with this, we have yet to miss a payment but sometimes I really wish it were in the bank already!  I cannot wait to see how God is going to use his people this time to get us funded for the next steps.

Speaking of funding, my friend Natalie is doing a fundraiser to bring her girl Sara home.  Ok, she is doing multiple fundraisers BUT she is using AdoptionBug to sell some really awesome T-shirts.  Jason and I just got our in the mail yesterday.  We decided that instead of doing something big for our anniversary, we would help a fellow adoptive mommy to get her daughter home.  You can purchase the shirts here: http://www.adoptionbug.com/keller/

Here we are in our new shirts!

And on to our current fundraiser, this is a HUGE Auction of over 100 items to be sold on Facebook.  Please share this with your friends and family, this auction could be a huge success if we get the word out about it. FACEBOOK AUCTION.