Visiting Home

Today Mike will go on leave and turn in the paperwork for us to be able to fly MAC into Norfolk. Monnie, Mikes step dad, has been gracious enough to offer to pick us up at the airport and give us a ride to Alabama. Talk about answered prayers.
We are so excited to get to see all of our family and friends and visit our home church again. We would love for all of you to keep us in your prayers for smooth travel as we are trying to make it to Decatur, Al in time for church on July 1st.
If anyone needs to get in touch with us while we are in the States we can be reached at Meg's Mom's house in north Alabama- Debby 256-302-5455 or Mike's Dad and Mom's house Ed or Jackie 334-981-8770 in south Alabama.
Please be praying for Willow and our dog, Bama as we are leaving her in the care of our competent neighbor, but it is a long time for them to be apart.

Many of you know that we have friends who are adopting from Ethiopia. Well, they will be leaving to visit with him on Sat. They are very excited and have a great peace about the upcoming trip. They would love to have everyone's payers as we all know how powerful prayer is, that they would have a safe trip and that their son will be comfortable with them.

A little hang up, but not to worry

Well, in our last post we told all of you that the I-600A had come in. We were then waiting on the home study. The home study made it to Rome on the 19th, but we then received word that the recommendation and other paperwork needed didn't make it so they were unable to send off for adjudication. Of course I was upset and calling everyone to find out what had happened.
Ok, hold on....
The paperwork the embassy in Rome needed was there, they just didn't realize it. And, for that matter so was the recommendation. Adopt Abroad, though sent new paperwork just to make things easier and all is ok.

one more step out of the way

We received word today that our I-600A has come back to Rome from the States. For those of you who don't know, that is the immigration paperwork and federal background checks. The home study has still not reached Rome for them to ok it with the I600A, but as soon as it does they review the entire thing and seal it and that part will be over.
Also the dossier is now complete!!! We are just waiting on verification and authentication of the Gov.
We'll update everyone when we get more news.

God Bless,
Meg

Here are new pics

Some of these pictures are very good and with some of them, my batteries were dying so they aren't that great, but I wanted everyone to see Willow and the baby's room.









This is our home.. I will get a better picture when the sun is not in front of the house, but for now you can at least get a look at it.

We are now with the Placement Dept.

WOW, We received an email yesterday that let us know that we are now with the placement department at LNI (Los Ninos International)!!

We are trying to finish up the dossier so that we can send it to LNI and they can send it to Vietnam. We are waiting on just a few documents to come in and some are already at the Department of State in DC for Verification and then on to the Vietnamese Consulate.
In order to send in the dossier we are now trying to raise another $6000.00 so keep us in your prayers.
At this point we are painting Willow's room and the new room, and taking lots of pictures for an album to be sent to our little girl and tying up loose ends of things that may have changed. Like, yesterday we were a new packet of docs. to look through to see if any of ours had changed and they had so we need to redo some of our docs.

May God bless your day as he has ours.

The home study is finished

Finally!!! Debbie got final approval on our home study over the weekend. This now means that she will send the home study to Los Ninos (LNI) for them to send off for verification and authentication. Thank God they have decided they will take care of that for us. We will then sign the contract with LNI, send them the agency fee, get our dossier together and send it off for verification and authentication. LNI will then send the dossier to Vietnam for them to approve it. Once that happens, we will be "in the waiting pool."

No news from Rome

I called the US Embassy in Rome yesterday to find out if they have received anything back from immigration for us and so far they haven't . They expect to know something in a few weeks. Adopt Abroad, who is the agency that our social worker, Debbie works through also hasn't given us final approval on the home study yet either. We were hoping to hear word last night, but didn't.

God Bless,
Meg

Adoption News

As many of you know, we have been working on the adoption process for almost a year now. We thought that we were going to adopt a little girl from China, but when the regulations changed we no longer qualified.
After lots of prayer we decided that Vietnam was where our hearts were called. Now due to the fact that the agency we were working with only worked with China we then needed to find a new agency.
We are happy to say that we found an agency located in Texas, Los Ninos that we are now working with.

Our social worker, Debbie has been very accommodating and patient as she had to reformat a lot of our home study and even lengthen it. Los Ninos requires many items and education that many other agencies do not. We have been working very hard together to get this done. Plus we have had numerous mail issues so our home study was held up a little due to the fact that our reference letters just could not seem to get to us.

Diana, Cathy Dan and Kevin we have now received all of your letters of reference. Thank you so much for your support and kind words. Thank you to everyone who is keeping us in your prayers and supporting this adoption.

We have been waiting on Los Ninos for 2 weeks to find out if our home study is going to be approved or not. Just today I received an email from Debbie stating that only a few minor changes need to be made, but that there is nothing else that needs to be added!!!