Update: Dossier Complete!

On Friday, February 10, we mailed our dossier to West Sands Adoption!  This was a lot to gather and complete in less than two months, so we are happy to have it completed.  According to the flow chart West Sands gave us, it takes 2-3 weeks for the dossier to be sent to Ethiopia.  From there, it says that the process varies by country, but they gave us an estimated 3-6 months of waiting for a referral.  Once we receive a referral, we will travel to Ethiopia for the first time for court. Then it will be another 6-8 weeks when we travel there again to bring home Baby Frazey!  The dossier is a huge step done because now we are just waiting for a phone call......


We are also required to get fingerprinted by USCIS at Homeland Security in Phoenix this week.  Those take six weeks to process, but West Sands told us that they do not need those in order to send the dossier.

From here, our updates will be letting everyone know where we are on the waiting list.  We don't have a number yet--so stay tuned! :)

Garage Sale #3 Update

We had a garage sale on February 4 to raise more funds for adoption costs.  We had so much left from the last sale we decided not to collect any more items this time around.  Again, God blessed this sale.  He brought many shoppers-it did not slow down until almost 1:00pm! All of the big box TVs sold (which previously no one seemed interested in) and the clothes were very popular at this sale.  As I have said before, it was so neat to see people get excited over the littlest things.  One woman found a bag of beads and walked up to her husband and said, "Look what I found! I love them!" It's fun to see the reactions! :)

This week we are mailing in our dossier.  We are going to the bank together on Tuesday to get our papers notarized and then, Lord willing, we will be mailing it off!  With that, we must send $500.00 so we were hoping that we would raise that much at the sale.  God is good and faithful.  He has answered our prayers according to His will. 

Garage sale #3 raised $565.00

Thank you for all your support and prayers leading up to this sale.  Please continue to pray for our child and God's blessing to be upon this and that He would direct our steps.

Thank you!

Progress Progress Progress!

Our passports came in the mail!  They took less than the 4-6 week range we expected, so it was a great surprise to see.  We are also almost finished collecting the items needed for the dossier and we plan to get the dossier mailed off in the next couple weeks!

With our expected timeline, there is great possibility that God is forming our child in the womb at this time and will be born in the next few months. How exciting!!  :) 

Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow!

We are once again blown away by our garage sale total!!  We thank God that our friends and family were able to donate items, that He drew a constant crowd of people on a 3 day weekend, and that those little 25 cent items add up! 

Special shoppers Joe and his grand-daughter

Thank you SO MUCH to the people that donated items for our sale.  Every little bit helps--and you know the saying: "One man's trash is another man's treasure"!  It is neat to watch people get so excited over the little things they find and that they are getting such a bargain price for things they want. 

Again, thank you to the Frazey family for letting us take over the garage (especially Marissa who has been parking outside since the last sale) and for helping us sort, price, set up, and sell! 

We could never have done this without all the support from our friends and family.  Thank you!

Another special shopper looking at clothes for baby R.C!

So now, what you really want to know:

the total raised at our sale today was.......

$728.91

God is so good and faithful!

Even with that amount raised, we still have a lot left over! We will be having another sale on February 4, so if you have items you would like us to pick up, please let us know.  Thank you!

Cleared!

Making progress! We have reached a big step in the process this week.  Yesterday we received our paperwork from the judge and we are certified to adopt in the state of Arizona.  We were at a standstill until we had that, so now we can move forward. 
We have filled out our I-600A form which goes to the U.S Citizen Immigration Services department at the national level.  Basically that just lets them know that we are going to be adopting internationally.  They must approve and clear us on that level.  We are able to mail that right away now that we have the judge's paperwork.
 What we are still waiting on is our passports and letters from various places for the dossier.  Once we get those we will be able to mail that off as well!

A Few Facts

Some people have asked why we chose Ethiopia as the country for international adoption. Different countries have different requirements, so our age and the number of years we have been married narrowed down our search at first. We knew we wanted an African baby, which narrowed it down even more. Then when we saw these facts, it was impossible to have opened eyes and turn our head the other way.

 

Here are just a few things about Ethiopia. Lord willing, we will be helping one child escape from these horrific circumstances.

• One in six children die before their fifth birthday

 

• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old

• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition

 

• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.

• Ethiopia has less than 1 dentist for every 100,000 people.

• The median age in Ethiopia is 17.8 years

• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)

• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone, and there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia (this number varies, some say there is as many as 6 million orphans).

• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa

• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)

• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.

5 million children in Ethiopia are orphans or have lost one parent.

 

More than half of Ethiopians lack access to clean drinking water.