David and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary on Wednesday! Time flies when you’re having fun! While we were saving for our first GWCA program fee, we have been busy gathering our adoption paperwork and some of our dossier documents for our Home Study.
Since we started the home study with Nora at Lutheran Family Services, she has already received our Washington State Patrol background check back. No response yet from the FBI on our fingerprints but we are expecting that to take a while but our letters of reference have been coming in already! Thanks to all of you who put love and time into writing those letter! You are a precious part of our journey in so many ways!
After digging up every address we’ve ever lived at - We’ve sent off our Minnesota, South Dakota and California background check requests and we are each working on our biography questions still…that seems to be taking the most time as is pretty detailed.
We have our physicals scheduled for the 17th and meanwhile we’ve saved enough to submit our 1st program fee to Great Wall! Praise the Lord…so when we complete our home study paperwork (our dossier) it can be sent to them and we move to the next level in our adoption process. What’s next? More paperwork and fees! We get our dossier documents authenticated at the state and national capital, then we file the i-800a and i800 forms to the department of immigration and naturalization – The i800a is an application to determine our suitability to adopt a child from a convention country. Once that is approved, we file the 1-800 which is the petition to classify a convention adoptee as an immediate relative and is necessary to finalize the immigration process.
We’ve barely started this long journey – two months ago we were at the informational seminar just learning about adoption with Great Wall and now here we are and it’s kind of a mind blowing and yet it’s gone so smoothly in spite of our futile attempts to direct and control the process…There is no doubt that we are NOT in charge here. This is Gods thing and we are continually overwhelmed by His love and grace…Your continued prayers and support are so appreciated!
David and I also thought we would plant a tree to commemorate our 5 year anniversary and the beginning of Eva’s adoption process. I am set on a flowering cherry tree. We have a spot off the back patio in perfect view from Eva’s bedroom window. My vision for that plot will be to make it into “Eva’s Garden”...a labor of love to keep us busy while we wait and pray for the day she will stand in her garden under her tree. I am researching Chinese botanical gardens to start a list of plants, flowers and designs that we can incorporate into the garden. So far the cherry tree, irises and peonies are on the list.
