Alison filling out the shipping information. One more bit of paperwork...
The last 36 hours have been a blur. Our I-171H arrived on Thursday afternoon, and even though I was hoping for it, seeing "U.S. Department of Homeland Security" on the envelope shocked me speechless. For about 3.5 seconds. Then I was hooting and hollering and running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what I needed to do to finish our dossier.
After spending a small fortune on a parking meter (actually, 2 parking meters, but that's another story), I hiked through the capitol complex with my huge stack of folders, found the correct office building, passed through security, rode in an elevator with a man dressed in a what appeared to be an authentic suit of armor from medieval times (while he complained that the security guard wouldn't allow him to carry in his sword, which was also authentic...), and cautiously surrendered my precious paperwork to a woman in the Bureau of Commissions, Elections, and Legislation.
Thirty-five minutes later I handed over a $300 check, collected my certified documents, and sped home, thinking I might be able to get the dossier in the mail before the end of the day.
As it turned out, photocopying all those certification pages took longer than I expected. I had to make 3 copies of each, and then attach them to the correct forms in my 3 existing stacks of copied dossier documents. It doesn't sound complicated, but it's surprisingly time consuming. By the time I finished, it was already after 4 o'clock, my Mom was needing a break from babysitting, my kids were getting hungry, and I sensed that the responsible choice was to give my attention to them for the rest of the evening. Considering that I had yet to quadruple-check my dossier and make sure everything was included, this turned out for the best.
So, this morning I finished verifying that all was in order, packaged the paperwork, wrote a check for the agency, and announced to my family that the big moment had come. It was time to ship this baby off.
Hopefully, this is the last I'll see of our dossier. I'm cautiously optimistic, but until my family coordinator reviews it, I'll be on pins and needles wondering if I did everything correctly. I'm especially concerned about the certification of our income documents. Because we own a business and are self-employed, we had to create some documents to explain our various streams of income. Unlike the other documents in the dossier, which each received their own certification page, the income-related documents were paper-clipped together with a certification page stapled to the top document only. This seems a bit sketchy to me, but it complies with the instructions we received from our agency AND the person who did the certification. So, here's hoping.
"What's next?" you're probably asking. Well, once our family coordinator approves our dossier (hopefully sometime next week), a courier will take it to the State Department, where it will be further verified and approved (a 1-day ordeal). From there it goes to the Rwandan Embassy, where it will spend about 2 weeks being studied, approved, and translated into Kinyarwanda (not sure on this last part...the translation might happen in Rwanda). And then, at last, it will fly away over the ocean to the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion in Kigali, Rwanda, where it will remain until we receive our non-objection letter (i.e., approval to adopt) from the Rwandan government (the wait for this is usually 3-6 months...currently averaging about 5 months).
In reality, the length of our wait time is anyone's guess. Rwandan adoption is so new, there really isn't yet a concrete system for processing. Some families who submit dossiers after others still receive their approvals first. And when Rwanda says something will happen by a certain date, we have to take that information with a grain of salt. The American obsession with schedules and deadlines doesn't translate in most of the world, especially in Africa. Therefore, we must be patient and remember that the timing of our adoption, like everything else, is in God's hands. This truth will be a matter of intense focus for me in the months to come.
For now, I'm looking forward to enjoying this milestone and temporarily turning my attention to my favorite time of the year: CHRISTMAS!!! God willing, this will be our last holiday season as a family of 4....
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Alison, Congratulations! I know what a weight this is off of you. Just so you know, we didn't really understand how long it would take our dossier to be "approved" and maybe it doesn't take everyones this long, but our dossier arrived @ AWAA on October 12th @ 9am and did not go to the Rwandan embassy until October 22nd!! I was shocked @ this amount of time :( Also, I did not hear from our coordinator except that it was there, so I finally just sent e-mails and ask if our dossier was approved, where it was, etc. I just wish I had known all of this before hand- I guess I thought it would get there and be @ the embassy in a few days. Praying it will go quickly for all of us!! Maybe we will travel together??
ReplyDeleteThat comment sounds so negative and I do not mean for it to be in anyway, just wanted to let you know so maybe you would be spared some of the wondering I have done over the last few weeks!!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Laura! No worries. :) I'm trying not to expect miracles...just hoping our dossier is at least on its way to Rwanda by Dec. 1. We'll see if that happens! Our medicals will be 3 mos. old on Dec. 10, so it would be nice if we can squeak in under that deadline!
ReplyDeleteYeah!! now the "real" wait begins! We are praying for all adoptive families for Rwanda!
ReplyDeletejen and bill