A lot of good news

I can't believe how long it has been since Greg and I have updated our blog. We have been busy as usual with the adoption and with life, and on top of that, we have all been sick twice in the last month and a half. Fortunately, we only had colds, and not some of the nastier bugs that have been going around, but even so, it has been difficult to keep up with everything that we need to do.

Our dossier is finally done!!! Yay!! -- We had all of the documents together by the end of December, and mailed them off to a courier service in Washington D.C. to get the Federal certifications and Chinese Embassy seals. Unfortunately, when they arrived here in mid January, we found a mistake in one form. We had an extra copy without the mistake, but all of the certifications had to be redone. We mailed that form back to D.C., and sent the rest of our documents to our agency in California. Unfortunately, they discovered at the beginning of this month that a different form also needed to be redone. We completed it, had it notarized, county certified, state certified and set it back to D.C. as well. Our agency now has all of our forms, and they think that they look good now. I am not sure if they have mailed our dossier to China yet or not, because they are trying to time it so that it arrives right as Chinese New Year is ending so that it won't end up buried at the bottom of a pile on someone's desk. As long as the Chinese adoption authorities don't reject any of our forms, then we are essentially done with our paperwork for this adoption. There will be a few more short forms for us to fill out, sign, and return at a few points along the way, but we think the hardest part is finally behind us. Please pray that this is the case.

We also have some wonderful news about out fundraising. As you know, God did provide everything that we needed for our dossier submission. We were incredibly thankful for that, but we knew that we would owe our agency between $10,000 and $12,000 once we reached the next phase of our adoption, and we didn't have any idea where that money was going to come from. We did not receive any of the other grants that we had applied for. But by God's amazing grace, we already have everything we need for this next step! Friends and family members have continued to send donations in for our adoption, and a family that we barely even know contributed a donation more generous than anything we had ever hoped for. As a result of these gifts, there is currently more than $16,000 available in the girls adoption fund! That will cover everything we need until travel time. We cannot even find words to express our gratitude and joy!

We have now raised nearly $35,000 for the girls' adoption, and that is incredible. When we travel, we will need just over $20,000 more, so we can't stop our fundraising efforts yet. Toward that end, we will be doing a Jimmy Johns fundraiser on March 12, and a fundraiser at the Cone, probably in May. We will be providing more details about both of those soon.

Thank you always for all of your support.

Kristie