Our First Form to LSS

We mailed off our registration form to Lutheran today, which officially begins our adoption journey with them.  We are very glad we found them and love them already.  If anyone is interested in adopting in Colombia, we highly recommend them.

Adoption Classes

Time to learn...Dainis thought he was finished with school!  We are required to take a minimum of ten hours of online classes for our homestudy.  We took a total of five classes and learned a lot.  We will be taking a few more for our process with Lutheran.

Our 2nd Fingerprints

Dainis took a vacation day and we went to the Phoenix police department and got our fingerprints done through live scan today, and it worked.  Yeah!  We then took all of our paperwork to our home study social worker to start our file.  Our fingerprints will now be submitted to the state of AZ to process.  This usually takes 60 days.  We can submit our home study to the AZ court for approval on September 26th.  We will meet with our social worker on August 7th for our first meeting.

When we got home, there was a package waiting for us.  We got pictures of the boys in the mail from Lutheran!  We are so excited that we can now look at them all of the time!

Our 1st Fingerprints

We went and got our fingerprints today.  The prints of my left hand didn't turn out so well!  So, we discovered live scan at the Phoenix Police Department.  If anyone needs to get their fingerprints taken, we highly reccomend this.  Your fingerprints are scanned digitally and then printed out.

Home Schooling Convention

We went to our first homeschool convention today at the Phoenix Convention Center.  We know we want to homeschool, and there is definitely a lot to learn!

Here We Go!

We submitted our letter and pictures to the agency's representative in Colombia today, and she will present it to the boys' children's home. 

After we get approval, then we will start all of the documents for the US. government and Colombian government.  The documents that will go to the US government is called an I-800 Form, and it goes to the US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS).  The second set of fingerprints that will go to the FBI is part of the I-800 Form.  It takes about two months for the I-800 to be processed.  At this point you will have the approved I-800 Form and your approved Home Study as the start of your dossier.  The dossier is the name for all of your documents that will be sent to Colombia.  The dossier is a huge part of the adoption process.  It will include the home study, I-800 Form, Colombian application, letter of introduction from our family, physican approval on our health, certified birth certificates and marriage certificate, passports, formal pictures, employment letters, financial statements, a psychological evaluation, and yet another set of fingerprints!.  All of these documents are notorized and apostilled.  Apostille is a notary of the notary from the Secretary of State where the form was notorized.  Except for our birth certificates and marriage certificate, everything can be done here in Phoenix.  All of these documents will go to the ICBF.  ICBF seeks to evaluate prospective parents social, psychological, mental, and physical "readiness."

Although it is a lot of paper work, you have to just take it step by step.  We are so excited to be on this journey!

Our Letter of Introduction

Because of Lori's medical history, Lutheran suggested that we submit a letter of introduction to the boys children's home asking for pre-approval to adopt the boys.  If we get the pre-approval and finish our home study, we will get to know more about them.  This is what their description on the website said:

Two sweet brothers are waiting for a family! They have a strong desire

to be in a warm, loving, supportive home. The boys are good students.

They have tender, loving hearts and relate well to their peers. They

younger brother likes to play soccer and the older brother enjoys

playing board games. They both enjoy cars and Legos.

Our Paper Work Begins for Our Home Study

Now that Dainis has graduated, we are ready to move forward on our adoption!  We filled out all of the paperwork and International Child Foundation (our home study agency) received it today.  Everything was sent to our social worker and our first visit will be in the morning on August 7th at our house.

Our First Meeting

We had our first meeting with Lutheran Social Services of MN today and loved them.  We are excited to start our adoption journey to Colombia!

A Special Celebration

We are in MN visiting Dainis's family for his Grandparent's 70th wedding anniversary!!  They are so special and so loved!!  Their faith to God and each other is such a testimony to so many.

Lutheran Reference Families

We received three e-mails from reference families today that loved Lutheran.  We have researched a lot of agencies and are very excited to meet with them!