The Devil wont steal our JOY

The Devil sure does hate adoption, and he will use anything he can to discourage us during this process. Today the Devil used someone in the community to attack our family about the adoption. This person did not understand the adoption process and instead of asking us about it , decided to assume we must be making the whole thing up because we haven't brought Owen home yet. This person basically harassed me for the better part of the morning, until I was finally able to explain the process in a way I hope she could understand. While I try very hard to not let people like that get to me , it did.  Nobody wants this process to move faster than I do. I have a son waiting for me to get everything together to bring him home. He is waiting for us 6,112 miles away.  Let that sink in, 6,112 miles is separating me from my child. The child I have grown to love, and want to raise more than anything.

Let me explain how an international adoption works for people who may not be familiar. It is long. It is time consuming. And it is exhausting. But it also so WORTH IT. Most international adoptions can take between 1 and 4 years. Owens country happens to be on the shorter end I think of that spectrum, averaging 12-18 months. We are well on our way to having him home by February 2016. We are making great time in terms of getting our documents done as fast as we can. But there are some things we can not control. We can not control that it took our social worker over a month to come out and do the home study after it was paid for, we can not control that after it was done it took her another 7 weeks to write it up and send it. We could not control that it took almost a month to get an appointment with USCIS, and another month to get approval. Our dossier was finally sent a couple weeks ago, but to get there it took a lot of paper work. Most of that paper work required other people to do some work. It took us awhile to get some of the documents needed. So yes, it takes awhile.  But it is WORTH IT.

-We committed to Owen in November of 2014. ($8,225)
-We paid for our home study in December of 2014 ($1,400)
-Our homestudy was completed in January 2015
-But not submitted to us until March
-We sent off for USCIS in March ($890)
-But didnt have our appointment until April
-We finally got approval on May 5 2015
-We were waiting for the last needed documents until June
-Once we got them , we went to get our dossier authenticated ($280)- and waited another week for them to send it back to us.
-Then we finally sent it to our agency the last week of June. ($4,500)
-They took slightly over a week reviewing it.
-But it should arrive in Owens country THIS week.

As you can see there are a TON of things that have to happen before you can bring home a child.

Next we have to wait for our dossier to be translated, we have to wait for the Prime Minister to review it and invite us over to meet Owen. This whole part is going to take about 3-4 months. So we should be traveling by October / November.

The next set of fees break down something like this:
$1,400 which is the hosting fee. This will pay for our apartment, our translator and our transportation.
$4,000 for plane tickets. This is just an estimate. It could be more or less. Because we will not have much notice (most families get about 1-2 weeks notice to be in country) we are having a hard time guessing.
$200-$250 for food expenses in country (again just a guesstimate)

With in 14 days of arriving home from our meeting with Owen we will owe the Agency a $4,500 fee accepting his referral.

As it stands now this is where we sit with funding:
We have about $4500 in our savings (our adoption fund)
We have $471 in our FSP
and we have about $471 sitting in escroe at our agency.

We thought we had the hosting and accepting fees completely covered and that all we needed to wrory about was the plane tickets. But some of the money we thought we had covered fell through because the friend giving it to us had some unexpected expenses come up. We can not use the money in the savings because it will be due to the agency within 14 days of arriving home and that is not enough time to raise that much money.

So we are working on some fundraising ideas, and working on  ways to bring in a little extra income during the next 3-4 months, by working overtime and such. I am starting to get really worried that we might not be able to come up with the necessary finances in time. But God has provided each step of the way and I am keeping faith that he will continue to see Owen home. I know in my heart that this little boy is worth every single thing we need to do to get him home. I can not wait to meet his sweet little self and love on him !

While we may not have a huge circle of supportive friends and family, the ones that make up that circle are amazing. Family is what you make it and I am so thankful for the family we have <3 Some of them people Ive not even met ! But they have been such an  amazing support system it would be a shame to exclude them from being family. Thank you all so very much !