More of the Story

So, we sent our application in and started our process of going through the paperwork and scheduling our home study.  I was so nervous about the home study, but it was great!!!  Our social worker was just wonderful and made us/me feel so at ease through the process.  We meet with her on three different occasions and received our completed home study the end of June.  During our waiting time we continued to complete our physicals, background checks, financial info etc.  We also had to have letters of reference and we are so thankful for those who did that for us and our family!!!  After we received our finalized home study we were able to apply for our I-600 (immigration background clearance)  we had to be fingerprinted (which I thought was very interesting, Matt not so much since he has had to do it several times with being in the Army).  This is probably the most important piece of paperwork, this piece of paperwork will tell us if we are approved to adopt from Ethiopia and they approved us.  We received our clearance pretty quickly.  So, after that last piece of paperwork came in we got everything notarized and took the items to be State Certified and then made three copies of all the paperwork and mailed it off to AWAA with lots of prayers and we became DTE (Dossier (all our paperwork) to Ethiopia) on 9/30/11.  So now we are in the waiting phase of our adoption and this can take between 10-16 months for us to receive a referral.  During this time we are going to be fundraising like crazy and trusting in God for His perfect timing for Him to bring us our child!!  Please be in prayer for us as we continue our journey to meet our beloved child of His!!!