GARAGE SALE FUNDRAISER: THIS WEEKEND!! 5/4

Garage Sale

ALL PROCEEDS GO TO SUPPORT:

The Make a Way for Michal

ADOPTION FUND

Saturday, May 4, 2012

8:00 am-1:00 pm

The Storeroom   2530 East President St.

Lots of electronics including printers, DVD players & TVs. Tons of clothes, books, and housewares. Appliances including a washer, dryer, and dishwasher. Gold's Gym All in One. Lots of framed art.

For more information:

(912) 844-4566 (Matthew)

Learn more about the adoption:

www.makeawaymichal.blogspot.com

Donate at:

http://www.gofundme.com/27l19g

Home Visit COMPLETE!

Our home visit with the social worker was completed today!! We turned in our birth and marriage certificates, local police clearance reports, financial reports, Adoption petition (This gives the reasons we want to adopt and lays out some other answers to questions China wants answered), as well as a few other document. The Social Worker completed the walk-through of our home to make sure it is completely safe for Michal, and she interviewed the boys.

Next, the social worker will meet with Matthew and I separately in two weeks. At that time she will collect our doctor's physical reports, as well as medical documents on the boys, and a verification of employment created by our CPA for both Matthew and I. Then, she will take all of the information and write up the written home study document.

This is a pretty big part of the information that will be sent to China as a part of our dossier, and almost all of the grant organizations require that your homestudy be complete for you to even apply for grants. So we are eager to get this completed so we can start applying!

All of the some of this same paperwork is needed for our I-800 A immigration documents as well as our dossier documents.  Actually, we have everything we need for the I-800 A documents and we hope to mail those out by Friday! From there we will wait for an invitation to be fingerprinted in Charleston by the Department of Homeland Security.

DON'T FORGET THE GARAGE SALE IS COMING UP MAY 4th from 8:00 am-12:00 pm at the STOREROOM at 2530 E. President Street. If yon can help us with it, please let us know, we need LOTS OF VOLUNTEERS! We have a massive amount of stuff to sell!

IPad winner!!

We have a winner! Mrs. Kathy Dutko from Tybee Island, GA won the iPad mini on 4/15/2013!

The ticket  sold by Rory Coyle!

Mrs. Dutko's Grand-daughter is in Jackson's Preschool Class!

Congratulations Mrs. Dutko & thank you!

Scripture about Adoption

Adoption Scriptures

1 Thessalonians 5:24
New International Version (NIV)
24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

John 14:18
18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Isaiah 6:8
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Isaiah 43:5
Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.

If you have read this and. . .

You are praying for us

Have a word of encouragement or

Uplifting scripture

                                        Please comment below!!

Busy Week Ahead: Home Visit & Dossier Prep

Please be in prayer for us this week. 

There is a lot going on here in the middle of 

Adoption Land!!

We are right in the middle of the chaos which is preparing our Dossier.

The Dossier is the complete document of who we are. When we have it all together, they will translate it, and send it to China!!

For the Dossier we have to provide:

• Adoption Petition (we write it)
• Birth Certificate(s) for Matthew & I 
• (Health Department)
• Marriage Certificate (Court House)
• Legal Name Change Form (SS Department)
• Employment Verification (CPA)
• Financial Statement (We write)
• Physical Exam (physician)
• Police Clearance (local police department)

So that is 6 stops in all & 

we pray it all goes smoothly!!

I am glad that Matthew & I both are primarily from Savannah, still live in Savannah, and got married in Savannah! That makes this all easier. The only thing that complicates it (other than making that many stops while working & raising two kids LOL) is getting my birth certificate from Albany, GA

Then for the grade finale, a social worker will come to our house this coming Friday 4/19 to verify that our house is safe for a toddler!

We can and will continue to do all of this through Christ who gives us strength!!

Adoption orientation went well today! We got there on time and Chaundra, the lady that will be helping us with the adoption says we did GREAT with our paperwork! I did not feel like we did great. We were typing Matthew's 5 page autobiography while we drove to Atlanta, and I had just finished typing my 7 page Autobiography Wednesday. You can't leave any area of your life unturned starting from birth, parents, siblings, school, marriage, fiances, extra-curricular, and parenting! We were printing copies of our Autobiographies and double checking our checklist of required documents about 12:00 midnight after the drive up. We realized we had one paper that was supposed to be notarized that we missed. . .GOOD NEWS, Chaundra said that was our copy of one of the documents, so it did not HAVE to be notarized.

What a wealth of information!! 

We got to stay with my cousin Keith Barnes and Hillary Owen last night! They were great hosts and they have a beautiful little girl! Then, Saturday night we traveled across to the other side of Atlanta and stayed with another cousin of mine, Phil and Jamie HongKham and my Aunt Flo and her husband Raymond also came over too! So a trip that started out rushed and stressful ended up being a lot of fun and a great time with family! 

On the ride back to Savannah we filled out LOTS of paperwork for our Dossier, which includes our Home Study and I-800 A paperwork.  The Dossier is pretty much the completed document of who we are physically, financially etc. . .that will be translated into Cantonese and mailed to China. It includes birth certificates, marriage certificates, certificates of employment, and a copy of our Home Study. The Home Study is completed by a social worker in the Savannah area that we will met with three times. At least one of the visits will be at our house. The entire Dossier can take up to 5 months to complete.

 The I-800 A is a document we submit to the United States Citizenship and Immigration department that they use to determine our suitability to adopt from a convention Country. The Department of Homeland Security will complete this.  After the meetings with the social worker, we will go to be fingerprinted in Jacksonville.