First Post...The past year

To Get started, I thought I'd write a post describing our journey up to this point.

About one year ago we started our adoption process..can't believe it's already been a year!!!

We signed up with Catholic Charities, here in Madison. Started with 16 hours of education, required by the State of Wisconsin for all adoptive parents. Throughout or education classes, we contemplated whether or not international adoption or domestic adoption would best suite us. As you know, we've chosen international adoption through Ethiopia.

Many people have asked us "Why Ethiopia?" It's a hard question to answer. One reason is that I (Heather) have two co-workers who have adopted through Ethiopia, and both of which have done it twice. Which, to us, speaks volumes. We had thought about China or another Asian country, however, the wait time in China is very long, and it is one of the most expensive places to adopt from. Korea is closing it's adoptions to America in efforts to encourage more Korean families to adopt children so they can stay in their own country.

Another reason why we were drawn to Ethiopia is the extreme need for Ethiopian children to find forever families. Ethiopia children are often abandoned or orphaned due to poverty (parents cannot afford to feed another child), or parents are too ill or have died due to illness/disease. The living conditions in Ethiopia are nothing we, Americans, can even fathom. We are often told by our agency to prepare our hearts/spirits before our trip due to the conditions we will see while there. We believe we are being drawn to this country for a reason.

So..you are probably wondering..why has it been a year and we still don't have a child? Well, in order to protect a child's rights, the child's birth parents/family, and us as adoptive parents, there is a lot of paperwork involved to have us become official parents of an orphan.

We first needed to have a home study completed...this included 4 interviews with a social worker at Catholic Charities (required by the State of WI and Ethiopia). First interview was with both of us, 2nd and 3rd interview was with each of us individually, fourth was at our home...this started in Feb of 2009 and we were officially done with our Home study by June of 2009 (interviews, paperwork, back ground checks, references, and home study: preparing our home to meet WI foster family requirements).

In May, we researched International Agencies. We chose Christian World Adoption (CWA) which is located in North Carolina. We were assigned a case worker to help us with our Dossier...a packet of documents required for the country of Ethiopia to allow American parents to adopt. It has taken us up until this week to complete that dossier.

What does a dossier include?

• Cover Letter that has to be notarized and authenticated by the State Secretary
• Power of Attorney allowing CWA to act on our behalf in Ethiopia - also notarized and authenticated
• letter from our employers - notarized
• letter from our bank - notarized
• letter from us to the Federal Republic of Ethiopia requesting to adopt from their country
• Clearance Letter from local police for each of us
• Home Study
  
• Home Study agency License
• Home Study Social Workers License
• Home Study approval Letter
• Passport photos for each of us...notarized statement that these are our photos
• Birth certificates - originals
• original marriage certificate
• Medical reports for each of us...signed by our doctors and notarized
• Family photos (with statement attached stating these are true pictures of us/family)
• 3 yrs of page one of our 1040 tax forms
• 3 or more reference letters
• and a couple of required forms for CWA to process post adoption reports.

So now you know why it has taken us all summer/fall to complete our Dossier!!!!

Yesterday I mailed out our full dossier to our Courier service (The Assistant Stork) who will take our documents to US Secretary of State office to have the documents Authenticated, and then they will take them directly to the Ethiopian Embassy for authentication. Once that is done the courier will mail the original, authenticated documents to CWA. Once CWA receives the final documents, our final payment (big chunk!!!) and our final educational requirements, CWA will send our documents to Ethiopia government and we will be placed on the waiting list immediately!

From here on out...we wait.....

Keep checking our blog for updates, changes, new news about our process.

We love sharing our story with you.

Heather and Tom