DTH

I was planning to update earlier this week but was waiting for some official news.

I believe that I mentioned after we sent out dossier to our agency, we received word of a few things we needed to add. Additional photos, a notarized & apostilled cover letter for IHNFA in English, and a missing bank page that needed to go with our dossier so it had to be notarized and apostilled as well. We had all of that taken care of, sent to Atlanta, and then back to us so we could over night it to our agency!

And each day since I've been anxiously awaiting the message I received today:

Dear Nathan & Jennifer,

Congratulations on making it through the paper chase stage of the adoption process! Your dossier has been officially mailed to Honduras. Please consider today your Dossier to Honduras (DTH) date. (There was more to the email but these are the important words!!)

PRAISE THE LORD! - As one fellow adoptive family put it...our paper pregnancy is complete!!

Where do we go from here?

Now we wait. It will take several weeks for our entire file to be translated. Then it goes before the IHNFA to be reveiwed. There they will look over our dossier and decide if they want anything updated or changed. If so, we will have to do whatever they ask of us before being approved. Even if nothing needs to be changed or added, this process also takes several weeks. Once we are approved, we will wait for our first official wait list number!! (I can't wait for that day!)

From other people who are in the Honduras program, I am reading that from the time their dossier was sent to Honduras until the time they received their first number on the waiting list, is around 4-5 months. When I read that, my heart sunk a little. I long for our little boy to be home. I've been looking at pictures of the orphanages there and even the tiny bits of stories I hear just breaks my heart. All I can do at this point is pray, trust, have faith, and pray some more. For the most part, our work is done for right now. It's all in God's hands! (Which is much better than in ours!)

I ask that you continue praying for us. Pray for our family as God prepares our hearts for the long wait we may have to endure from now until our son is home. Please pray that this process moves quickly and smoothly! Pray for our little boy that even beyond his understanding he will have HOPE and PEACE!

One step closer son!!! One step closer...

DTH date: July 19, 2012 - Tonight, we celebrate!! :)

Too Good to Be True...

The day our Family Coordinator wrote to tell me our Dossier arrived, we received another messages saying there were a couple of changes. One of which we had already heard about and done. Before doctor's letters were only written if an explanation was needed. (Example: We had one written to state that because Weston was only one we did not have any blood work done. How his doctor had seen him since birth, excellent health, not exposed to anything that would make them concerned, etc.) Now there is a standard letter that much be written for each family member by their doctor. The other two things were additional photo pages which will be simple and a document that we were once told we didn't need, now has to be notarized and apostilled. Really not difficult, just time consuming to send it off and get it back.

The good news is that they are going to send off our Dossier to be reviewed while we do these last minute things!