Up until this point, the paperwork "ball" has been mostly in our court. Our home study report was finished by our social worker on August 10. It was then sent to her supervisor in Dallas to get some other docs (agency and social worker's license, among other things...) attached to it. I'd like to say that it all went perfectly smooth but nope. We have to remind ourselves that all of the delays we encountered are in His plan for this adoption. Most of this info may not matter (and be quite boring) to those reading this but I'm writing it here more for our records.
The first issue occurred when we received our home study and licenses from our in-state branch of our agency (mostly run by part-timers with other jobs) but were missing several documents that needed to be included for our dossier. We contacted both our regional coordinator and social worker to get those rushed to us. We received what we needed quickly and thought we were going to finally be able to send our papers to get apostilled (checks that the notaries are valid) in Austin. But as I was compiling the papers, I noticed the Certified Copy of an Original for our social worker's license was the photocopy and not the original! Another delay. She lives 1.5 hours away but luckily was coming close to Houston for a dr appointment so she could meet J with the original. As soon as he got that paper, we sent our papers to get apostilled. The original plan was for me to drive the 3 hours to Austin with both boys while M was at school and then drive 3 hours back in the same day. Not my idea of fun. We found out that the UPS store right next to the apostille office will provide an overnight service for $10 per document. Well worth it considering the price of gas and temperment of two little boys strapped in their car seats for hours! So the papers were in the hands of the UPS store getting apostilled in Austin on Friday afternoon, scheduled to arrive back in our hands on Saturday. J gets a call from the UPS guy saying one of our notarized documents (the home study signed by the social worker, not us) was signed by the notary but not stamped. Our other original copy did have the stamp but that was not the copy we sent to get apostilled. Fortunately, they took us at our word that the other one was stamped and they were still able to get the apostille for that document as long as we got that page stamped afterwards. Okay, we can do that. So, as soon as we dropped M off at kindergarten, my day today was spent driving 1.5 hours both ways (with two boys in tow) to go to the Bank of America where it was originally notarized. It took longer to get the boys out of the car and strapped into the stroller than it did inside the bank getting her stamp. Thankfully, both boys did great on the drive and we were back to Houston in time to have lunch with J. Before lunch, though, we were able to put everything together finally send our Dossier to our agency in Virginia! Phew, that's a big load off our backs. Once they get our Dossier tomorrow by 3pm (we wanted it to get there fast!), our family coordinator will review everything (which she's mostly done via email already) and on Friday of this week, it will get sent to RUSSIA! From that point we just wait! Once we are registered in a region, it could take anywhere from 6-12 months before we are matched with a child and get a referral.
So this process has been a little frustrating with mistakes made that could have been avoided but the way each obstacle was so easily resolved reminded us that although this process is not going according to our timeline, it is going perfectly according to His timeline. God has a plan for this adoption and we need to trust that He is taking care of the details!
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