Few words...priceless value

We finally get to say OUR HOMESTUDY WAS APPROVED!!! We just got the news this morning.

As were headed out of town on friday, to go "yurt" camping for the weekend, we checked our email and saw that our homestudy final draft was ready for our review. We couldn't believe it, our social worker had completed our homestudy in a few days! That is unheard of because social workers are allowed 30 days to write up the report. The entire homestudy process has been encouraging, supportive and wonderful in every way. We enjoyed a relaxing weekend at the beach and read our homestudy by the campfire. As we read the report we were deeply touched by comments made by the social worker, as well as comments made in our letters of references. To all of you who wrote the letters, Thank You! We were profoundly moved by all the kind words. We feel so blessed to have such incredible people in our lives and to feel the outpouring of support along this amazing journey.

"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather recognizing and appreciating what we do have." ~ Frederick Keonig


Upon receiving our homestudy the next step will be applying to immigration. We have to request their approval for us to bring an orphan, from another country, into the US. We submit this application, the I-600A, which is called the “Application For Advance Processing of Orphan Petition”. In return we get the approval form, which is called the  "I-171H". This step usually takes 5-8 weeks. While we are waiting for the "I-171H" form we will be gathering documents for our dossier. It is amazing to think that in just two months we could be submitting our dossier to Ethiopia.

"The Journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." ~ Lao Tzu