USCIS mailed off!!!

On Friday we received our finalized home study and our info to send in the USCIS application and today we mailed off the USCSI application and all paperwork needed to accompany!!!  One more big step completed and it feels great!  The next step is we wait to get assigned our fingerprinting date.  Whatever date they give us Jason and I have to go to OKC and get our fingerprints done and then once that is completed we just wait for our approval letter.  The down side now is that we just wait for what I have heard to be about 2 mths, before we will receive our approval letter and then at that time we will be able to submit our dossier to our agency and on to Ethiopia which will then place us in waiting for our child!!!!  2 mths sounds like a long way away but then again to think that in 2 mths we will be virtually paperwork free sound sgreat to me!  And just to think that other than some continuing education stuff, we will just be waiting for our phone to ring (somewhere between 6-10 mths later) with someone on the other end saying "this is your referral call, we have a child for you", is VERY exciting!!!

Now we have to jump back in to fund-raising mode again as our next sum of money is going to be approaching us in the next 2 mths.  Our next fees will total to $5,000 when we submit our dossier and as of now we have $1500 of that so our goal is $3500 by March 10th and I think we can do it!  We are going to be doing a puzzle-piece" or something of the sort fundraiser soon so if there is anything you want to doante we would be more than appreciative.

We have also teamed up with 147 Million Orphans and will be selling some of their wonderful apparrel with proceeds going to our adoption.  Thank you so much to them for being a great source for families like us to fund-raise without having to really do much work other than promote it like crazy!  I will post again about this soon so stay tuned!

On another note, Jason and I started our non-proft orphan ministry with 3 other families from our church and this past Saturday had our first meeting.  There were lots of tears and heartwarming stories and everyone was so excited that it has started and are helping us get the word out.  From people that have already adopted internationally, to people who have adopted domestically, those who have fostered and those signing up to, those who sponsor children in other countries and those that just recognize there is a need to help and want to do what they can...it was just AWESOME!  We are going to be having another meeting within the next month and hope to have our audience doubled and will start getting all the details set but for now we have a mission, vision, belief, name, logo, websites, blog and name soon to be secured and licensed with an account to hold the funds we have already had donated. The websites are not done yet but for now we have a blog to send people too, check it out HERE.