My How Quickly Things Can Change....

This post shows you how fast International Adoption can change. Yesterday I received a very distraught phone message from our CM telling us that the Vietnam Government has decided to shut down inter-country adoptions to the US. This was rumored but yesterday as confirmed. The DIA has stated that they "intend" to finalize all in process adoptions who have a referral by July 1st. Sounds like no problem for us right.....WRONG!!!! First of all we are still waiting to receive in our mailbox the "Official Match Letter" and without that we legally do not have a referral yet. That's the first problem. Not a huge problem since we are sure we will have it within the next 10-14 days. Our next dark fear comes once the I600 is submitted to the USCIS. The USCIS is approaching every adoption as if it were a fraud and they are scrutinizing each case. We are praying that Derek (and the other 7 families with us) will have nice clean, clear, cut and dry dossiers and that there will be no little loose ends for the USCIS to nit pick about. As long as the dossiers slide through USCIS without incident we should be (well Derek should be) home free. The second problem is that as I mentioned above the DIA "intends" to finalize all adoptions in process but that statement has not yet been confirmed by our agency so it is a little scary as we hang on the hope and prayer that this will all transition much smoother than the past 21 months have. Roadbumps.....we have seen all we care to see now God!!! I have laid this adoption in God's hands about a month or so ago as I have lost all of my strength to fight the battle alone and in that time we have seen great positive thingss happen so we are going to continue to pray that He will continue good works for all of us.
We are asking that if you haven't prayed for us lately please do so and if you would please pass on a prayer request for us to one more person that you may not have told about us before. Prayer will get us there and back with Derek in our arms!!! I will remain strong in faith that God is going to work through this for all of us. Please be strong with us!!!!

My Baby Girl Turned....."16"

Wow I can't believe it has been 16 years since I held my baby girl. We have made many journeys together over these past years. As you remember I posted about the purchase of a car for her for her 16th birthday and how she thought it was "ugly". Well Saturday on her BIG day she had a complete change of heart. I got up bright and early and hung signs and balloons on the car and parked it right out front in the driveway so everyone could see it as they drove by. Lots of heads turned. We gave her the keys for er day too. She reluctantly left me take a few pictures of her with it even. We took her along with her sister and her best friend miniature golfing and out for ice cream. When we got home I left her drive the car in the driveway a little. She was all of the sudden....THRILLED to have her own set of wheels. Those of you who told me to hang in there and that she would soon like the idea of it being HERS....you were right!!!!! I've attached a few pictures. Don't mind how she looks in the close up, she has very bad allergies and her eyes were at one of their worse points.
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Okay so Friday's update came as a surprise to us!! We have found out that the Vietnamese government is at this point saying any families who get an official referral before Sept. 1st WILL get to finalize their adoption. WOOHOO...that counts us IN!!!!! We had to fill out a Commitment Letter to accept Derek's referral on Friday and we Fed Ex'd that to Arizona to our agency to arrive Monday morning. We are hping that will get sent over right away so we can get our "Official Match Letter" from the DIA. The associate should be meeting with the DIA early in the week to pass on the Age letter and then he DIA can send us the match letter as soon as they get them. Continue to pray that the DIA will recieve the age letter Monday or Tuesday at the latest and that they will issue the match letter immediately since May 1st is a holiday in Vietnam and as we all know by now the country shuts down government operations for a few days for all their holidays. Therefore if they send the match letter at the beginning of the week it should get to us while they are clebrating their holiday and then when they ge back in the swing of things we should be lucky enough for them to submit our I600. WOOHOO!!!! We are finally seeing positive forward action!!!
Keep praying!!!!!

ROLLIN..ROLLIN..Rollin...Keep Those Updates Rollin!!!!

We got word today that our Age Ammended Letter was delivered to the DIA TODAY!!! WOOHOO!!!! So we now wait to get "The Matched Letter" in the mail. Don't anyone tell out mail lady but I will be secretly stalking her every mov for at least the next week. And each day she neglects to deliver the letter the more stalking I will do. I will be peering around corners and curtains every day. Once we receive that letter we will also get Derek's dossier documents expalining his abandonment. This is very crucial to us as we are veru curious of his situation. Right on the heels of that will be the submission of "The I600" for Derek's visa (I know he is a little young but hey...a guy's gotta have some credit) to come to his FOREVER HOME!!!!
Keep praying because as you can see it is sure working for us!!!! Thanks to all!!!!

Great News.....
We got an email from our CM today that our Age Ammended Letter that was successfully notarized, certified, and apostilled (thanks to a group effort and a well syncronized plan) was sent to the DIA TODAY!!!!! WOOHOO!!! This means we wait now (hopefully not long) for the DIA to issue us through the mail the match letter and for our agency to forward to us Derek's dossier documents and our I600 will be submitted for the FINAL wait!!!! Soon Derek Soon!!!!!!

Your continued prayers are certainly working and we are truly thankful to each of you for them. Most of all we are thankful to God for the work He is doing!!!!

Update to previous post......

Another couple whom we will "hopefully" be traveling to VN with will be helping out with the Consulate end of the paperwork. Matt will be in San Fran for business this week and we found out that he can walk in with the paperwork and have it apostilled and pick it back up later that day!! WOOHOO this saves about a week or two or more of paperchasing through Fed Ex!!!! THANKS MATT!!!!! We owe you big time....maybe a good old Vietnamese meal on our trip will pay you back for your kindness!!! Plus he is taking Michelle & Jeff's along too!!! WOOHOO all 3 of us will stay on the same track until....out stupid home study update drags us behind. Please pray that this will move in a timely manner so we don't get separated from "the crew". We also got a call from our CM that the DIA has requested to have a copy of the age amended letter sent to them ASAP so they can continue working on our cases knowing that the original authenticated form will be sent to them shortly. This is tremendously good news as this way there is a chance we will get this finalized and travel before our HS even expires. Of course we still have to do it. We are hoping to get the matched letter this week and that our I600 will be submitted by next week. Seems the USCIS is moving on approvals at this time so we hope this will be working for us too!!!
Keep praying it's working!!!!!

HURDLE ALERT......

One more hurdle to jump but it is a low hurdle so I think we will just be able to step over this one!
The DIA has requested us to send a letter stating that we amend our original request of age for our adoption. We initially requested as young as possible up to 12 months. Since Derek is now 16 months we have to send an amended statement stating the age of 24 months. We also have to have it notarized, certified, and authenticated. Soooooo.....we are having it notarized over the weekend and I am driving to the SOS office on Monday morning and then Overnight Fed Ex'ing it out Monday afternoon to San Fran to the Consulate for authentication. Small hurdle but none the less yes it is another one to jump. Seriously I am running out of steam.

Also we have to have our child abuse and state police clearances updated which we completed and mailed on Monday so hopefully that will be a quick turn around time and then on May 2nd our SW will return to upate our home study. Man oh man I never imagined this stuff would expire before we got him home. Keep praying for smooth transition through this paper chase for us!!!!!

A Packing We Will Begin.....Again!!!!

I have decided that since it will only be a short time until our I600 is submitted that I will repack (for the 4th time) our bags for Vietnam. I figure if I keep trying sooner or later we will get there. We went over the weekend to do a little shopping with the girls and ended up at Carters buying for Derek too. It is an irresitable addiction of mine!!! There's probably some kind of help group out there for such addictions b ut please don't contact me about it since I kinda like this one!! Anyway we got these outfits to take along for Derek. Hopefully they all fit, it's hard trying to judge sizing for a little guy you haven't met yet. We have an array of sizes accumulated though since my addiction started. Fortunately our new nephew Levi came along and was born the same month as Derek one year later. WOW will he have some awesome hand me downs. Check out these cute clothes...


Well I have to go dig out the suitcases and get started. Hopeully I don't miss anything!!!!

Just a little more progress.....

We got a very short but very sweet update today. Derek's dossier has been forarded to the DIA this week. We were expecting that to happen last week but the DOJ was asking for a few more documents and they expected to send it this week. So that is now done. The next step is waiting for the DIA to send us our "Official Match" Letter and then our I600 will be submitted and we will be able to read some of the details about Derek's abandonment. We aren't expecting there to be many details but it will be helpful and interesting to read what we can about it. Hopefully this coming week we will get that letter and our I600 will get submitted. Our oal is to see the I600 submitted by the end of April. Once that step is completed it could be anywhere from 1 day to 120 days to be approved by the USCIS and then we will get our G&R date and FINALLY bring our baby HOME!!!!!

Keep praying....it truly IS working!!!!! GOD IS SO GOOD!!!!!