Yesterday we got the call from America World saying we got accepted into their Ethiopia program!! Yay!!! We applied Friday June 3 and I planned to write a huge blog about the experience and how I felt so moved by God and how I just knew things were going to work out..blah blah blah, etc. But after we clicked "send application" I didn't feel excited or moved, I felt deflated! When we started the application it seemed like one thing after another kept going wrong. My computer was having issues, then the internet suddenly stopped working and once the internet started working again, the picture that we needed to send AWAA was too large and I couldn't find one to fit except one that was over 6 months old (ok not that big of a deal I know but at that time it was!) AND we were running really late for our weekly dinner out with our friends. But really those weren't the main reasons for my deflated ego...it was once again our finances! There is a part of the application that asks for our Net worth, not good when you factor in our debt! At this point I was defeated and done! I suddenly started to worry that maybe I was all wrong in this, maybe I heard God wrong (as one person keeps telling me). Thankfully God is awesome and led me to marry an awesome man that is stronger than me! When I was ready to just give up, Chris reminded me that this IS what God wants us to do and that if the financial stuff is an issue then we will just work on it, but we needed to move forward. So, while still a little deflated, we filled out the rest of the application, paid our money and left for dinner. Tuesday (June 6) we received an email from the AWA intake coordinator asking us to explain our financial situation. Again I felt deflated. Thankfully again, I was reassured by my wonderful husband and my awesome God that we were going to be ok and just needed to keep going forward. Thanks to MyTotalMoneyMakover.com, I was able to show her our budget for the rest of the year and explain our debt (and how we aren’t ever using credit cards again!!). Again I couldn’t help but feel a little defeated. Thursday morning we received an email saying that they ask for more information from most families and that we should hear from her by the end of the week! When no call came Friday I was disappointed but my sweet husband reminded me that in this case, no news really is good news. Fast forward to yesterday, I had finally given up for the day around 3pm (4Est) and forced myself to work on actual work. At 3:34pm we got the call and the lady informed me that this was our call to congratulate us into the Ethiopia program!!! I immediately started saying “thank you thank you” and tried not to cry! According to Hannah, I was giggling a lot too! I wanted to update our blog immediately but we had to leave work right after work to work out on the soccer field with some friends and then drive to Pearland and Pasadena to get donations for our garage sale this weekend!
So what now? Well first we have to return the signed AWAA agreement packet and the first installment of the program fee ($1500) and then we will be assigned a Family Coordinator who will help us start building our dossier! We think we will be able to send in the agreement packet and the fee in about 2 weeks (unless we do really well on the garage sale!). We are Paper Pregnant!!
What the heck is a dossier?? A dossier (Doss-e-a) is huge packet of paperwork that will basically contain our life story! It will contain the home study report, Homeland Security forms, legal documents and more. I will post a list when we get the list from our FC. We will send it to Ethiopia for review and they will basically make their decision on whether we are fit enough to adopt or not from it. This process will take about 4-6 months and I am hoping that we will send it off by Jan 1st!
I wanted to get a cute picture of us filling out the application but I was too bummed and forgot, but I did get this pic...
Thank you everyone for your support we have received A LOT of donations for our garage sale this weekend and I am pretty encouraged by it all. I can’t wait to have our new little one home! Oh and by the way, we are asking for a girl or boy age 0-2yrs old, Jacob is going to be so excited!
~Abbey
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