USCIS Approval!

Our door bell rang at 11:30 Am this morning. I hesitated to answer it, as I was just about to put Emma down for a nap, but decided to go for it. It was our mail man. He had a huge package and a stack of mail. We normally don't see him because we have a post office box at the end of the street, but the package wouldn't fit in there. The package was for Brendan, so I tossed it aside, and immediately began rifling through the pile of mail, like I do every day for the past two weeks. And there was THE LETTER...our USCIS I-171H form that clears us to adopt internationally. Two hours later, we the we had been to the bank to have our dossier cover letter notarized, and to UPS, where we had shipped off the dossier to the MT secretary of state to be authenticated (they check to see that all notaries are legitimate. We have probably 23 different pages that were notarized during the process). They will hopefully overnight that back to us early next week, and then we'll send our completed dossier to America World in Virginia. If all goes well, our dossier will be on its way to Ethiopia in the next two weeks. Praise God!

The neat thing about all this is that yesterday, we asked several friends to pray for this form to come. I woke up this morning with a sense of peace that today was the day. When the form came and I called Brendan, he was, at that very moment, praying with a student for this particular form to come. Pretty cool. Guess Emma will have a little sister after all!

Emma announced to Brendan and I this last week that her name was “Gobbie.” She even answered to Gobbie when I would ask her something. I’m not sure where she got this strange idea, but we got a kick out of it! Also this past week, when I was putting Emma to sleep, we had an interesting conversation. We were laying in her bed, snuggling, and she sleepily said to me, “Mama, I was proud of you.” This sparked my interest so I asked her, “When were you proud of me sweetheart?” Her answer? “When I was born.” Now if that is not what every mom who has gone through childbirth wants their children to tell them, I don’t know what is! I’ll hold onto that memory for sure! We love our little gal, she is such a joy to be around (most of the time!) and it is so fun to see she begin to express all these thoughts she is having.

On the adoption front, we were successfully fingerprinted last Monday. Did you know they don’t use ink anymore? They have a machine that you stick you fingers onto glass and then they digitally take a print. Who knew? I thought I’d take some fun inky finger photos but no luck there. We did have a great family day driving to Helena, visiting the park, seeing the cathedral there, and having lunch. Now I’ve been anxiously checking the mailbox waiting for that coveted I-171H form to come! It could be weeks, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

Last weekend Emma and I (Brendan was out of town) had the privilege of joining the local group of families that have adopted from Ethiopia for their bi-annual get together. It was so wonderful to be with other people who had gone through this process ahead of us and to see these beautiful children. They are SO beautiful! It made my heart ache to hold our little girl. All I can say was they just seemed to be thriving as a part of families. God truly puts the orphans in homes! I am so thankful that there is a group of people who live here! Five of the families were actually from Missoula. We hope to be getting to know them more!

Enjoy some pics of the last few weeks! Have a great weekend.

Easter Sunday

One of the lastest favorite things to do, paint!

Our trip to the river on a sort of warm day

Apparently, Emma was feeling tired!



The musician training continues

Peanut butter balls

Good news!

I received a phone call this morning from the USCIS office in Helena, Mt. They called to schedule our fingerprinting appointments. We scheduled them for next Monday! I saw our social worker today and mentioned we had heard from them and her comment was, "Already? That's quick!" Thank you Jesus! We have to have our fingerprints taken in order to receive the approved I-171 form. So this is our last step before getting approval from the government to adopt. We have all of our paperwork sitting in a file box, organized, ready to go! This has been a long haul but we're getting there. Our agency gave out over 20 referrals last month, and gave out four more in the last two days. I love seeing these children matched with families and I am so thankful that it will, someday soon, be our turn. Yay for a day of good news!

Check this out

USCIS

Yay! Good news on the adoption front today. Our social worker contacted me yesterday to let me know that America World (our agency) had approved our homestudy write up. The magic line in the homestudy "Brendan and Katie Jamieson are approved to adopt one female child from Ethiopia, from 0-18 months old" is what we've been waiting for! The homestudy was done by the local Catholic Social Services office. It's been a long road folks- and we have a lot longer one ahead. We had the hold up with our paperwork going to the wrong office and not being forwarded on to the right office back in December. We were about a month behind where we hoped to be at that point and almost four long months later, here we are. To think that we really began this process last May, is crazy. It was last May that God really began to speak to us that this was the time for adoption in our family. We have known since we got married that we really wanted to adopt a child from Africa, but last May God confirmed that calling and this timing! To think it will be another year is hard, but we are so thankful to have jumped through this loophole.

At this point, the homestudy has been sent into USCIS today. We are waiting for a fingerprinting appointment and then the I-171 form that clears us to classify an orphan as our immediate relative. The timeline on their website says the wait can be 3 months for this form which we need to have to submit our paperwork to Ethiopia. It's been known to be less in other cases, but not normal. If you feel led, please pray for us, that this government office would have favor on us- our application has been sitting in their office for 4 months now- and that by God's mercy, we would move more rapidly through this process. We know that in all this God has the perfect child at the perfect time for us, but honestly, we are so ready to hold her in our arms and be her family.

Thanks for the encouragement and the prayers. We'll keep you updated as we know more!