Progress Update #13

William's birth certificate with a corrected authentication for the Ohio Secretary of State arrived safely home on Saturday, August 11.

We had our physical exams with our doctor back in June, and somehow, the doctor was told (I'm not going to mention any names.) that we didn't need our medical forms until the end of August. But we need them NOW for our homestudy to wrap up. So, I found a notary who works in the same building as our doctor and, she was kind enough to agree to come down to the doctor's office to notarize the forms on Friday. However, the medical information is not complete, and the nice notary's commission ends October 8, 2007 -before the papers will be likely to even leave our hands. UGH. That's all I have to say about that right now.

We are still waiting for the letter telling us when our fingerprinting appointment will be.

In other news:

William was summoned to report on to U.S. District court and selected to serve and sat on a jury Thursday and Friday, August 9 & 10. The case is over, and he is safe from being called for federal jury for four years and ate "free" pizza. At least it didn't conflict with our fingerprinting appointment!

We had our homeschool kick-off hoe down today! It was fun! There were farm animals, butter making, corn grinding, chicken feeding, a zip line, bubbles, square dancing, pot-luck dinner, and tie-dying. Stay tuned for the tie-dye creations! Thank-you, Joanna & Jason and the Best Nest Farm crew!

Is there a baby under all that paper?

This summer has been such a whirlwind of paperwork, appointments, and payments that we often have to stop and focus on the fact that God has another child for us!

In addition to praying for trivial papers that we're dealing with, we must remember to pray...

• That our child will have the food, medicine, and love that he needs to grow healthy and strong.
• For his parents and family that are mourning the loss of this precious little one from their lives, for the hardships that they're enduring, and that they will know God and experience His love and comfort.
• For the nannies and orphanage workers who are caring for him -that they will be blessed.

Each time somebody from our agency shares the wonderful news of a referral, has a court date, and shares a photograph, our hearts swell with the excitement to see these families finding the children that God has for them, and we REMEMBER that someday, eventually we'll be there too!

It will be such a joyful and surreal experience for us to travel to Ethiopia, AFRICA to meet our son! (There will be much prayer for that part later!!!!)

Photo Pages Part 1 "Our Family"

Here are the photos that we have included with our dossier. I have broken them up into three sections: Our Family, Our Home, and Family Life. I have put 6 photos on each page with captions, but have left out the captions for the blog.

"Our Family"

Photo Pages Part 2 "Our Home"

Photo Pages Part 3 "Family Life"

So, if you saw yourself on these pages, the people in Ethiopia will be seeing you also!

I'll send our update next week since there is not much to report...

"When will you get your baby?"

This question is becoming more and more common, and we love to be asked this and about how our adoption is moving along! It means a lot to know that people care and are excited about us expecting another child!

Here is our best guess as to when we will have our newest Schmidt...

Our I-600A orphan petition was received and stamped by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on June 12, 2007. At the moment, it is taking 4 months from when an application is received until it is processed. (I used this site to figure that out: https://egov.uscis.gov/cris/jsps/officeProcesstimes.jsp?selectedOffice=16) So, our best guess is that we will get our I-171H approval by mid to late October.

By the time we receive this paper that we need from USCIS, we will have had collected everything else that we need. We will take our pile of papers that were notarized in NC to the NC Secretary of State to have them authenticated. I'm think that will go quickly since we will be taking them personally.

After we make lots of copies of our dossier, it will be ready to FedEx to America World (AWAA) in VA, near DC. They will walk our papers to the US Secretary of State for authentication and then to the Ethiopian Embassy. We are guessing that all of this will be completed in November or December.

After this , our papers are ready to go to Ethiopia to the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs where our family will be matched with a child who is waiting for a family. I'm afraid to guess on this part. When we signed with AWAA, the minimum wait for a referral was supposedly 4 months, but nobody has waited that long yet. So far, AWAA has only completed 4 adoptions in Ethiopia, and we are down the list a bit. I would guess that we could wait the 2-4 months (but it could be less, could be more!). That would put us into the February-April range so that William and I would be travelling between March and June.

THIS IS ALL AN ESTIMATE! :-) We realize that everything will happen in God's perfect timing, and we appreciate your prayers for our family and for our little one in Ethiopia. Keep checking our blog!

Progress Update #12

Our birth certificates came home safely with their gold seal from the Ohio Secretary of State. ***8/4/07 William's BC is going back to OH because the authentication letter has an error.***

We are still waiting for our doctor to finish our medical forms and our postcard from immigration with our fingerprinting appointment to arrive. We're praying that our appointment and William's jury duty don't conflict. We've just about done all that we can do to complete our dossier, the collection of papers that go to Ethiopia.

We had nice visits with William's cousin Aaron, Trisha, and Mallory last week and William's brother, David and Liz with their 4 kids over the weekend. (Sorry, I didn't get a photo! Please, email me some, Dave & Liz.)