No inky fingers!

On Thursday, we took a quick trip to Jacksonville with our friends Derick and Shannon. They made the decision to adopt a child from Kazakhstan at almost the same time we made our decision, and its been an amazing blessing to walk through this process with them.

An important part of the international adoption process involves working with USCIS (United States Citizen and Immigration Services). We had to fill out Form I-600A, which is the Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition. Basically, this is our request in advance to be allowed to bring home an orphan and adopt him into our family. We had to send in our home study report, and birth and marriage certificates along with the application.

Once they received our request, they sent us a notice with our fingerprint appointment. Derick and Shannon got their notices just days before we did...perfect timing!) We needed to go into the nearest USCIS regional office (in Jacksonville) and be fingerprinted. These will be procesesd to make sure we are cleared to adopt an orphan. They took our fingerprints using a scanner and a computer--no black ink required. It was a fairly quick process, and it was nice to leave not looking like a criminal with black fingers. :-)

Once our I-600A is processed, we will receive our I-171H, which is the Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition. (Yikes--that's a mouthful!). This is one of the forms we will need to present to the judge when we're in Russian court.

We won't need the I-171H until our second trip to Russia, so waiting on this form will not hold up our process at all. We're still waiting for word on our agency reaccreditation, and will post more as soon as we hear something!

A great article about adoption...in time for Mother's Day

Just wanted to pass along this link to a recent article about adoption. It's encouraging to know that the celebrities who are adopting internationally are making it seem even more "normal" to the rest of us! Happy Mother's Day to all present and future moms out there!

More reaccreditation waiting...

Today we received an update from our adoption agency. It sounds like reaccreditation is going to take a little longer than we had hoped or expected. We had been hoping it might happen this month. Here is what they told us:

"America World continues to await reaccreditation to occur in Russia. The process of review of reaccreditation documents by the various ministries in the Russian government appears to be moving at a slower pace than previously expected. This has the potential to lengthen the time until reaccreditation occurs. Within Russia very little is being said regarding reaccreditation. There have been articles regarding adoption in the Russian media that have focused on the importance of ensuring the adoption process is completed correctly."

Thankfully, it's not completely negative news. No one thinks or expects that reaccreditation will not occur. It's just the time line that's in question. Please pray with us that God will move the accreditation process along, and that we will continue to be patient and trust His timing.