Prayers during IBESR wait.

Our dossier now sits in the hands of someone in IBESR and we received our number, [43]!

Now someone from that office will read our dossier and hopefully our children will pop into their mind and they will make a recommendation, also known as a referral. [See below-then apparently a meeting with our crèche director and the crèche director where the children live along with IBESR staff]

Assuming agreement between all parties, our agency in Haiti would communicate with our USA agency who will then contact us with the information about our potential children.

At some time a clock starts because within a two week time frame we need to agree to the referral or decline [not real sure when the clock starts?].

Declining means we wait for a second referral. Accepting means we agree to adopt the children offered and then will start to talk about dates for the two week bonding visit.

A few changes with the new process as we understand them, mean that during the bonding time a social worker will observe our interactions with the children and write a report up. The parents no longer need to travel to court as this report replaces that step in the process.

A time of mixed emotions as the excitement builds toward 'meeting' our children for the first time balanced with the knowledge that other families have waited over to a year for a referral as well as the fear that our referral may not be children that we would be comfortable accepting and we may need to decline the referral.

Last week agents from the USA met with IBESR staff to review the new procedures for the April 1st decision about being Hauge compliant. I have not seen anything yet about how it went.

A Haitian lawyer who works closely with IBESR wrote on Facebook yesterday that IBESR plans to work 'to sign and release some 460 dossiers in the next weeks'.  Do not know if this will slow new process people or not.

On a agency blog who visited IBESR in January they note that the head attorney told them that regular referrals should start in February.

While the IBESR needs to approve the referrals/matches they plan to work closely with the crèche directors who know the families and the children being matched. So sounds like the directors will met with the IBESR folks before a referral is made assuring better matches.

His staff reportedly would have an inventory of dossiers completed by Jan. 16th to start setting up meetings with the crèche directors.

Keep praying!

• IBESR staff as they process many dossiers both old and new process. Work efficiently [we hear that the support staff visit/chat and spend a lot of time on Facebook during work hours]. Work carefully so no mistakes. Health. 
• Crèche directors and IBESR working closely together for referrals and matches. 
• For our specific referral and match [again hoping for a younger boy and girl [OK with stable special needs] but open to the Lord's will]
• Two week time frame? That we will have enough time to pray, ask questions and respond. [Hear of one family's referral arriving more than two weeks after IBESR referred-no one yet knows how this works]

Being First…..

Do you like to be first? First seat on a roller coster? First for something good? What about first for something bad-do you like to just get it over with? Enjoy the unexpected? Adventuresome? What about first in line for the unknown?

Generally in life I do not push to be first. I did not even do so as a school child but would hang back a bit. Middle of the line was OK. Let me see how the other's accomplished a task.

In medical school often my evaluations read 'not aggressive enough'. True enough. I prefer to learn from other's mistakes than be the first to mess up, especially in front of a group.

With all the changes in the adoption process in Haiti we find ourselves one of the first families in line with our agency to go through the new process. In addition everyone else we know living in Haiti going through the adoption process already have their children living in their homes.

Our dossier arrived in Haiti the end of October and may be the very first one our agency submits to IBESR. Being first means no one can share their experience, time frames or give us an idea on what to expect.

Having lived in Haiti for 15 years I suspect that we will be called upon to use the flexibility and patience that we have developed living here as we move through the new process and the unknowns.

We will depend on our support team to partner with us in prayer during this journey especially when waiting for our referral, waiting to learn which children the Lord has chosen to join our family and afterward as we wait for the process to bring them home.

We 'hear' that the new law passed but as of yet still not printed in the paper.

Through a Facebook group we know that some people continue to wait for a referral more than 10 months after their dossier submission to IBESR under the new system.

So far have not heard of any new process families matched who did NOT already have a 'soft match' meaning that their agency already located a child.

Know that hundreds of charts, cases, representing families and children exist in the system each needing attention, time and action to move forward. PLEASE PRAY.

Faith can move mountains. God is in charge. His way. His timing. No delays outside of His will.

I-600a Approval

Cory called the number give and spoke to a nice man who let us know that we needed to wait 45 days to check on our I-600a.

Counting the days we noted that would be only 2 days from the deadline given on the letter about needing to pay the fee that we did not think we needed to pay. So we sent a second E-mail to the agent who helped us the first time.

He wrote from 'training' giving us an E-mail to write our question to and in less than 1 business day we learned:
 1.we were correct that we do not need to pay the fee,
 2. that our fingerprints arrived and we should hear 'in the next couple days' the final decision on our I-600a.
 3. a new phone number / e-mail and agent if we need help.

Today we received an E-mail requesting additional information if we were OK with sending it by E-mail. Cory came in and in about 1 hour sent the information off to Ashely. Just over 1 hour later we received the E-mail letting us know that the "I have processed the approval and we will send that to your mailing address listed on your home study " [This would be our Florida MFI mailing address]

Monday after receiving the E-mail about our I-600a we wrote our agency to make sure they received the E-mail letting them know that we do have residency visas in Haiti. The processing of our dossier continues and 'we'll see what happens'.

A blog from an agency in Port who talked with the IBESR last week indicated that the newly changed adoption law was sent to be printed on Friday, November 15th. Therefore, theoretically, it should be printed in the paper this week.

I-600a Appointment Needed

September 10th Cory mailed our official dossier and 4 copies to the agency.

So blessed to complete this part of the process before returning to Haiti so that we did not need to impose on family to finish up for us!

The dossier arrived and only a couple minor issues were identified on review. We confused the instructions about the pictures and therefore did not send as many as we should but the agency can make copies for us.

Also we included the same financial copies we sent in the spring and did not update. But this can be rectified by e-mail so no big deal.

Today if we do not hear from the US government in the mail about our I-600a appointment we will contact the Embassy in Haiti to see if it is at all possible to set the appointment before or after our trip to LaGonave as it would save us over 12 hours of travel not to have to make a separate trip.

We still feel that the Lord would have us adopt two Haitian children.

Taking into account the time that adoptions take in Haiti along with our ages it would be difficult to complete two separate adoptions so we continue to pray for siblings.

As of last week the creche did not have any sibling sets waiting for adoption and it could be a long time before they do. We know the Lord can open doors in His timing. We want to do His will. We do not want to rush before Him or drag our feet.

Prayers

• I-600a fingerprint approval at Embassy
• I-600a approval
• Siblings get to the creche to match with us or 
• that the Lord change our hearts by clearly showing us His will.
• Creche staff-need a new nurse
• Haitian adoption law to be published-if it will improve things, His will.
• Haitian adoption process improvements 
• Families and children stuck in the process to move forward. 

Authentications Done! Translations-prayer request.

Praising the Lord that our last document arrived with its pretty gold authentication seal yesterday!

One more step done.

As soon as the letter arrived in the mail Cory quickly scanned the document and sent it on to the French translator. All the translated documents...but one arrived via E-mail at 11 p.m. last night !

So we just sent the one missing page to be translated and are praying that she checks her E-mail during the day today and can send it back right away.

We'd hoped to send off the dossier to the Haitian Consult in Chicago today for legalization...but need to wait for that last page.

We made the needed copies this week of the English documents. Will copy the French ones today.

Questions pop up during the process but thankfully our agency helped this afternoon with rapid responses.

Living overseas makes some of the questions a bit trickier for us so we also placed a call to the Haitian Consult in Chicago as we hope to send off the dossier documents today for legalization. Need to call again to find out the answer.

Many people and a few agencies reporting on line that the new adoption law has passed in Haiti and 'just' needs to be printed in the Le Monitour to become official. If it would not get printed its basically like an informal veto.

The new law lowers the age requirement as well as marriage length and removes the need for families with biological children to have the President sign a dispensation.

For us it would remove the need for a presidential signature and speed up the process. This stage in the past took from 3 months to over a year.

The new law also includes Article 11 "Priority is given to married heterosexual couples or cohabiting couples habitually residing in Haiti." but what it would look like remains to be seen. 

Still trying to get as much paperwork done and organized as we can before returning home next week.

Prayers:

• Praising the Lord for finishing up w steps this week!
• That we can find the answer to our question today about our local police letters.
• That the last page gets translated and sent back to us before the post office closes today.
• That the dossier does not get delayed or lost in the mail system. 
• That the Haitian Consulate rapidly legalized each of the documents for our dossier so we can send off the completed dossier and the 4 needed copies before we return to Haiti on Sept. 11
• That the law would be published and go into affect. 
• For our children and their family to be drawn to or drawn closer to the Lord during this time.

Last 2 Documents sent for Authentication.

Adoption paperwork feels like riding a teeter-totter some days.

Lunch yesterday found us rejoicing because we received the re-notarized letter in the mail and learned by E-mail that our home study was finalized last week and sent on to the Secretary of State.

We'd received the corrected background-check letter earlier.

We worked to collect the needed documents and make copies needed to send in our I-600a form to the  US government.

This form, Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition, " is used by a U.S. citizen who plans to adopt a foreign-born child and enables USCIS to adjudicate the application that relates to the qualifications of the applicant(s) as prospective adoptive parent(s)."

Even though we do not know who our children will be this is the first step in the process of getting them US citizenship and immigration paperwork. For this part of the process we will need appointments for fingerprint checks again-likely once we return to Haiti at the Embassy.

The depressing/panic minutes came when preparing the redone letter to send off again for authentication at the Secretary of State office. Noticed for the first time [did not notice before we sent it the first time or when we asked the letter to be re-done] that it listed my name in it's short form, Kris Thede.

Every other document lists my legal name so we seriously thought that we may need to have the letter printed and notarized for a third time but thankfully a call to our agency reassured us that should not be a problem.

After the trip to the post office Cory spent hours scanning documents so that they could be sent electronically to a college professor who will be translating them into French.  We only lack the one that just went for authorization so she should be able to work on most this weekend.

Next week we will start the process of making copies of the 'dossier'. Not sure that the whole dossier will be translated and then legalized before our return to Haiti but doing our best. Thank you for the prayers.

Prayer Requests:

• Authentication of last letter in IN.
• Authentication of home study in CA.
• Correct and timely translation of all needed documents.
• Processing of I-600a. Good dates for fingerprint appointment.
• Keeping the copies [4 each] and documents organized. 

Authentications and translation.

We now have the missing documents and they already sport their pretty gold seals of authentication. 

We received the re-done letter back from Michigan State's Office of the Great Seal, correcting my mistake on August 8th.

We received our background check results in the mail last week. However my letter listed Cory's birthday as mine. A follow up e-mail assured us that the the correction will be rapidly made and mailed to us.

One of the authentications returned to us with a list of items that the notary neglected to put on the letter. We are working to get this letter re-notarized and then will need to send it back to the Secretary of State for the needed authentication.

Waiting on one more reference letter to return from authentication. 

Additional copies of our home study need to be authenticated in CA before translation/legalization.

E-mail inquiries and correspondence last week helped us to locate a translator for our documents that will make up our dossier that will go to Haiti. We sent the documents that we already have so that the translation can start in hopes that we will have everything translated by the first part of September. 

Prayer Requests: 

• Re-Notarization and authentication of one letter.
• That we receive Kris's background-check letter and the last reference letter.
• Finalization and authentication of our home study in CA.
• Timely translation of all needed documents.

Fingerprints and the OFFICE OF THE GREAT SEAL

First full day in Michigan,  Cory and I traveled to Lansing today to complete our background checks and authenticate most of our Michigan notarized documents.

Found out that my ring finger contains a double whorl, rather hard to get a clear print but after 6 try's we had 2 that would work.

Two copies each of two new documents notarized...but noticed at the Office of the Great Seal that while we corrected one mistake we missed the second one...in my tired state I grabbed the older letters not the new corrected one.

So tomorrow we will sign the newer letter in front of the notary and sent it off by mail to be authenticated. Also plan to send off one letter to Pennsylvania for similar treatment.

 Now 14 pretty gold seals proudly shine on our pile of documents that were signed in Michigan.

We also called our agency today asking about one missing document. We need to work on getting the needed document rewritten, notarized and authenticated as soon as we can.

The fingerprints should be here in 7-10 working days [off the record maybe in 5]

Home study corrections being worked on while we wait for the background check results.

Next week we start to investigate people to translate the documents that will comprise the dossier that travels to Haiti into French.

Prayers:

• No problems with running our background checks. That the fingerprints were done good enough. 
• That the remaining needed documents can be processed in a rapid fashion and sent back to us.
• Home study
• The missing paperwork
• The out of State authentication of the notaries and the last one for Michigan.
• That we find someone to translate and maybe also get the documents legalized.
• That nothing would get lost or delayed in the mail. 

Paperwork Progress

The home-study agency E-mails us with updates as the information and documents arrive to their office.

This week all our child abuse clearances arrived from the states we each lived in during our lives.

Our final medical papers, reports, and letters completed, notarized and in the mail today! 

All reference letters received by the agencies.

Information for fingerprinting, [who, when, where, how] researched and located for our first day in Michigan, hopefully Aug. 8th.

If all goes according to plan 'A' then in three weeks we will have completed everything we need to do in the application process and will be waiting for the finalization of our home study.

Finalized home study in hand will allow translation of Haiti dossier documents into French while at the same time completing the application for Advanced Processing of Orphan Petition, with the US Citizen and Immigration Services, I-600a.

July 27 will mark the 1 year anniversary of the door to adoption opening wide for our family.

Aloe barbadensis bloom

End of June.

At 6.5 weeks the last lab result came back from Port-au-Prince. So a bit early from the laboratory's estimation of 2-3 months! We rapidly sent off the results to the USA by scanning the results for E-mail.

Received word yesterday from the doctor that he will be working on the documents in the next few days.

The original headed to the USA on Tuesday along with the other paperwork for our file.

Think [hope] that the last referral letter was notarized and on it's way to the agency this week but not yet confirmed. So looks like we moved from mailing our first application letter to completing Applications 1 and 2 and [most] the home study requirements in 3.5 months!!

Also in the mail our Haitian bank letter and our certificates of good conduct from the Port Margot, justice of the peace.

 We scanned a cope of a needed guardianship from via computer to the social worker. A letter stating that Cory and I know first aid and CPR also headed to the agency this week.

The write up of our home study will start next week.

Our first full day in Michigan in August we plan to have the last two documents notarized and certified as well as get our fingerprints done.

Once our home study is finalized we will file our I-600A application with the American government as well as adding it to our dossier so it can be sent off for translation.

Will start to research and contact French translators in July so that when our dossier is complete we can move to the translation without delay.

It's our prayer that we can finish the dossier, translation and legalization during our trip to the USA, Lord willing.

Home Study Paperwork

This week we continued to talk to an agency in California about our home study and as of now a social worker is planning to come the week of June 17th to do the study and provide education classes.

Still smiling. 

She will be in Florida for a conference before coming down and we found a second couple roughly 60 miles south-east of us who will share in the travel costs and also have a home study done that same week.

Travel plans, finding the right flights and a seat on the plane continue to be researched but looks like she will fly in and out of Port-au-Prince. Pray she can get the needed tickets, as well as for good travel.

People flying into Cap Haitian this week experienced weather delays and early in the week the Port-au-Prince runway was closed due to a Brazilian plane running off the runway and needing to be investigated.

Homework Breakdown [home study and dossier]:

• 3 new books and written paragraphs
• 4 web sites to read and 2 sentence overview
• Forms/lists/documents [over 20 total]
• similar to first agency-5 reference letters, financial, medical, family picture, marriage and birth certificates
• new-driving records, house floor plan, guardianship form, new questions for autobiography, safe home study questionnaire, personal profiles, credit check
• Eli and Anna will need TB skin tests to complete their medical forms.
• Cory found out how to do our local police letters so we plan to head to Port Margot next week to do this.
• Cory will also need to head to the bank to ask about the bank letter soon
• Need to continue to research the how and where for our background checks.
• 10 hours each on-line classes about adoptions to be done before the home study 
• Fingerprints for back ground checks. 

Dossier and Home Study Search Progress

Progress this week but not really many items checked off the to-do list.

We learned that copies of Eli and Anna's birth certificates needed to be ordered and sent to our agency. Done.

Serious searching on-line for experienced agencies who provide over-seas adoption home studies and we identified a couple of agencies we did not know about. 

Phone calls and E-mails later we are now working with a social worker from California to arrange travel and complete applications for a potential visit in mid-June. 

A couple other missionaries in the central Plateau are also communicating with her so if it works out we could split travel costs.

Although the plans are not confirmed we will start working on the 'homework' that needs to be completed before the study. Three additional books and 4 web sites round out the reading requirements and we will need to write short paragraphs. One of the three we are working through as a family.

Both of the others I've already read, one we borrowed from friends and the last one we own on Kindle so Cory has also started his reading. 

A call from Cap let us know that our laboratory work returned from Port-au-Prince. Hoping that all the tests returned so we can send them on to the doctors for our medical letters.

Then the last document we need to complete our paperwork is a local police letter. While we've not explored the how-to a lot we did get a example copy which we will translate into French before asking for advice from a Christian police officer we know in Port Margot. 

Application II, part 2.

Praise the Lord as we finish up preparing a second set of documents to mail to the USA.

Yesterday we completed a couple big steps for dossier documents and our secondary application. Cory and I traveled to Cap Haitian to have medical testing and visit the notary office. Cap trip.

We prepared 3 non-notarized documents as well as filling in, signing and notarized 5 additional documents. I finished reading the second book of required reading and Cory completed one book and almost the second in the last couple of weeks. 

We located someone in Cap Haitian who can translate legal documents into French.

We continue to search for the best way to complete the home study and background checks needed for our dossier. 

Hoping this picture does NOT change. 

We rejoice that several of the reference letters including employer, physiology, bank, and some personal reference have been completed, notarized and mailed.

Once we receive our medical test results we will mail them to the doctors who only need these results to finish out medical paperwork. I had a false positive TB skin test last year and am praying that my body does not repeat the mistake.  A positive test would mean that I need a chest x-ray. 

The only thing that remains for us personally to work on at this stage is some required on-line study. As we hope to figure out soon which agency to work with for our home study we will hold off on this a bit realizing that the home study agency may have a preference to which on-line study we do.

Praising the Lord for the progress.

Praying for the final steps and timing to become clear.

Praying the lab results return within a month.

Dossier Prayer Requests

So after the big dossier push early last week we slowed down a bit.

The letters arrived to our references so we know they will be going out soon. [Thank you!]

I organized the next to-do list and wrote E-mails looking for information. We continue to fill out some of the papers that will need to be notarized and read the required books.

Things to pray about for this next stage:

1. We find a way to have our home study done soon. We located a social worker recently moved to Haiti who's willing to come up and do it but would require an agency to approve her and be OK with giving us a copy of their license. Or maybe a Haitian social worker or psychologist? Or the expensive way of flying in someone from the USA. Some one in Haiti would be nice because of the limited travel and then they could also do the post-adoption visits later. 
2. Getting our medical labs done-looking for a spot in Cap Haitian so we can do them soon.
3. Getting our background checks. Have an E-mail into the US embassy looking for information for an appointment. Think it would be nice if it could fit in with Cory's short planned trip to LaGonave late next week.
4. That we find someone who knows if/how one gets a certificate of authenticity for a Haitian notary.
5. That we find out how to do the local police letter in Haiti. 

Praises: How much we did get done last week and for the information that is starting to come back from my E-mail inquires. That our agency will do one step for us at cost, saving us extra weeks needed mailing letters back and forth from the USA as well as the increased risk of something getting lost. 

Paper Work Sprint

After Friday's surprise arrival of our level II application and dossier paperwork I let the agency know by e-mail and then sat down and read through the papers.

On Saturday I divided the paper stack into 4 colored folders: blue-information, green-papers we could deal with now, yellow-deal with later, and red-need additional information.

Then I read closely each paper while constructing a large organizational chart to help us keep track of the paperwork, document tracking process.

Cory then read through the papers with the chart in hand to correct or add any information I missed.

Now the instructions acknowledge that the paperwork can be 'overwhelming' and advised breaking it into 'manageable' pieces. We read it, understood it, throughout about it and buckled down to get a big piece done in only two days.

Why the rush? Why the sprint? Well because Scott our visitor would be leaving on Wednesday [today] and he was willing to carry our documents to the USA, and send them registered mail on to the agency.

As the paperwork included financial records, birth certificates, copies of passports and driver's licenses we decided to work hard to complete as much as we could of the paperwork that did not require a notary. 

By the end of the day on Tuesday [yes, we did stay up past our normal bed time] we had prepared over two pounds of mail for Scott to bring to the USA.

Now we will slow down a bit and take things one step, one document, one page at a time while we wait to hear from the agency how to produce in a couple of areas. 

We will also read the two required books and set up a time to do our on-line studies.

Please continue to pray that we can find the answers we need to complete our dossier in a timely fashion. Pray that the mail does not get lost or delayed. [18 documents to our agency and 8 letters for references or information.]

Surprise!!

Today a large white envelope appeared at our front door containing our second level application and dossier paperwork.

Do not know when it arrived in Haiti as today is not a flight day and our mail normally comes to Haiti on Tuesdays or why really John Pierre decided to check for additional mail in Cap other than he knows I was waiting for this one but it arrived.

Anyone who's been through the adoption process knows it consists of lots of paperwork. We now need to gather together 25 different sets of documents covering: agreements, applications, health, family, finances, background checks, photos, homework...

Prayer Request:  That we can figure out starting next week with the help of our agency, the US embassy how to get the paperwork done correctly [the first time] and in a timely fashion. At this point not sure what can be done here vs. having to return to the USA.

This 'step' can take 4 weeks to 6 months+ for folks in the USA.

Most missionaries prior to the recent changes to the adoption process in Haiti adopted independently while their children lived with them. We pray that someone knows how the process will work now for Americans who are residents of Haiti. Someone needs to go first right?

On Monday we will start to try to figure out with the agency and the US embassy how we can complete the mountain of required paperwork.

Can we do the home study in Haiti? Who, when, where, how??
Fingerprints. Here or not?

Just one more example: "Local police clearance letter."  Well that could be interesting as the local police station burnt down last week during the protests.

Step 1-Make sure that this can be done in Haiti and not the USA.
2. Appointment.
3. Go
4. Assuming the letter from our local police wouldn't be in English. So translated.
5. Would likely have to travel with the police chief to Cap Haitian to have it signed in front of a notary.
6. All the paperwork needs to be notarized.
 7. Certification. Then a paper from the 'State' that says the notary is in good standing.  Then how do we get the certification that the notary is in good standing if we do this in Haiti?
8. After that the whole thing needs to be translated into French if the first copy was not in French.
9. Then needs to be legalized by the Haitian Consulate/Embassy.
10. Copies made- most 4 each.
11. Mailed.

Repeat 25 times. Likely we'll need notaries in at least 2 States and maybe in Haiti as well and the certification process can be different for each location.

The paperwork needs to be done in a 'timely' fashion as adoptions in Haiti can take years which means different parts of this paperwork can expire and need to be updated during the process.

YES we need your prayers. We know the Lord asked us to start this journey. Now we need the knowledge, help, hope, strength and patience to take this step one paper at a time.