October 2006 Archives

Hi everyone!

I wanted to update you on our paperwork. I had a meeting with Diane at our agency this past Thursday evening. She reviewed with me all the documents that I have gathered in the past month. Everything was good! She helped me pick out 12 pictures of Scott and I, our home, and our families.

We currently are waiting on 2 more documents before we can send our Dossier to Colombia! The first (not hard to believe) is our psych eval. Yes, I still do not have it. We should have it sometime this week. The document that might delay us is our 171H. This is the approval from the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). If you recall, this was the first application that I worked on and the fingerprints that we had to do downtown. They also needed a copy of our home study. This is a pre-approval to adopt orphans from overseas. The home study was sent on Sept. 29th . We are told it is taking the Pittsburgh office 4-6 weeks after they receive your home study to process the 171H. Some cities like Chicago and Atlanta are 3 months behind!

Once our agency has these last two documents, our Dossier will be sent to their facilitator in Colombia. She will then translate our paperwork to Spanish. This will take about a month. She will also decide where our Dossier will be sent. They work with various casas privadas (private orphanages) or the ICBF (The Colombian Institute of Family Welfare). She will decide based on our request for sibling boys, which program will have the least waiting time.

The documents will then be studied by either the Adoption Committee of the casas privadas or the Adoption Division of the ICBF. This could take up to three months. We will then be added to the waiting list! This should be sometime around March 2007.

That’s when patience must take over. Up to this point, I know what is going to happen and how long it is going to take. We are told you could be on the waiting list for a week or a year! We will have no way of knowing. We will just wait until we get “the call”. I know there is only one who knows for sure and I will be leaving the timing for Him.

Thanks for checking back and sharing our adoption with us. I will let you all know when our Dossier has been sent!

Oh I forgot to mention. Some of our documents will EXPIRE every 6 months! So come April I will be redoing paperwork!!!!!!!!!! Yea can’t wait!!!!!!

Also as I am writing this I just received a call from Scott’s mom to let us know that Scott’s cousin Karen just had her baby! Virginia Scout Tucker was born earlier today and the family is doing really well. Congrats to the Tuckers!

Love you all,
Donna

Hello everyone and thanks for checking back with us to see how it is going. We are very thankful for the support that we have been receiving.

As you know we have been working on our Dossier. This is the information that will be sent to Colombia for us to be matched with our children. There are 23 documents and items that need to be collected.

Some of the documents also have to be notarized and sent to the state to be certified. I had to send 2 of Scott’s documents that came from New York to be certified in Albany. Everything else will be sent to Harrisburg once I have them all collected.

You will also be happy to know that the FBI has cleared us to have children. The clearances have now been sent to the Secretary of State to be certified!

So it seems that everything is running smoothly………well almost! One of the documents required is a psychological evaluation from a licensed psychologist. This person must write a report up to 4 pages to include an evaluation of our emotional state in regards to marriage, family, work and community. This person must also discuss our history of loss and grief. The last thing that has to be included is the results of a personality test.

So I thought I would just open the phone book and pick a psychologist and make an appointment. But that didn’t happen. I made 20 calls before finding 2 that felt qualified to write such a report and gave personality tests. We chose a psychologist in Oakland since he was close to Scott at work.

Scott and I had plans to meet outside the office at 12:30 pm. I got there first and as Scott was walking towards me, I felt something biting me on my thigh. It got so bad I ran into the building into the bathroom kicked off my shoes and scrubs (I wear scrubs to work) and out flies a BEE! He stung me 3 times! I had never been stung before and I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. Anyway, after I got the stings taken care of we went in for our appointment and were greeted by the psychologist whom I’m told does custody hearings in court. He first had us do our personality test. This test consisted of 570 questions that would measure 12 areas of our personality. We had to answer true or false to questions like: “I read mechanical magazines”, “I have a good appetite”, “If I were an artist I would like to draw pictures of a flower”, to “I am not afraid of spiders”. I must admit I had to answer false to that last one.

A little over an hour later we then sat down with the psychologist to discuss the issues he had to write about. Let’s just say that if I was meeting him for any other reason, we would of walked out after the first 5 minutes. Although we felt he was a very intelligent person, and was capable to do the report, he was not a very professional therapist. I heard more curse words than I have heard in the last 10 years in 5 minutes! When he walked out of the room, Scott just looked at me and said, “lets just get through this next few minutes. It took us a long time to find someone and a time when we could all meet.” When we were finished I explained that after the report is written, I will need it notarized. He did offered to do this for us and have the report by next week. I am still waiting on the report. Can’t wait to read it!

I must say that he wasn’t what I expected.

As I continue on this paperwork journey of the adoption, I want to share a quote from E. Stanley Jones.
Faith is not a belief that everything will turn out to please us; rather it is the confidence that no matter how things turn out, God will somehow use the events in our days for His glory and our good.

I do believe and trust that God is guiding me through this paperwork. It is going very smoothly and in record time according to my agency. Check back soon and I will let you know when I am done with the paperwork.

Donna