dossier...DONE.

This is the post I have been waiting to write....the dossier is done! 

Check out the sweet check list. 20 total items that we had to get signed, notarized, and then state authenticated in Pierre. It took about a month and a half to get everything done. Just a side not...of the 20 documents we had to prepare, Travis was responsible for 2 of them. Can you guess which 2 things got finished last? I was "this close" (holding my thumb and my pointer finger about 1 cm apart) to taking over and just doing them myself. But with some subtle...or not so subtle prompting, he got them done! To his credit, he has been very busy lately. The next day, they were Fedexed to Pierre to be state sealed, or authenticated. We got them back from Pierre on Thursday, and I got to work making copies of everything and putting it all in order. 

Here is a picture of all the documents and copies on my kitchen table. It might not look like much, but trust me when I say it feels like a BIG accomplishment getting it all finished. 

I will find out more on Monday, but from here our documents will be sent to Michigan, where the Bethany international office is located. After review, our agency will send our dossier off to country! I will try to keep you posted on when that happens...hopefully soon. Once our paperwork is in-country, we can begin the BIG WAIT, or the wait for a referral. Estimated wait time for a referral is currently 3-12 months. It seems like a pretty big range of time, and we are hoping for closer to 3 months. Once we accept a referral, we can begin to make travel plans. We will have to take 2 trips of approximately 2 weeks each and about 2 months apart...give or take.

We would appreciate prayer for the following:

• That our dossier looks good and will be sent to country promptly
• We will receive a referral sooner rather than later, but in God's perfect timing

post rummage recovery

 We are finished with rummage sales! At least for 2013. It truly was amazing how much stuff we had for this rummage sale. The picture below is only part of it....we still had a whole garage full of stuff and a whole front lawn of furniture! Another HUGE thank you to everyone who donated in any way, shape or form for either of our rummage sales. What a blessing! We had some fantastic weather, besides a down poor Saturday morning. But thankfully we waited until after the rain to set everything up. Traffic was a little lighter than our last rummage sale, but we still consider it a success.

The big question everyone kept asking, "What are you going to do with all the leftover stuff?!" I seriously think I got asked that about 20 times. Each time I said, "Well, I will keep some things to try to sell online, but the rest of it is getting donated to....somewhere." 

Well wouldn't you know it, there were a couple of ladies who stopped by to shop and when they were paying for their items, handed me a piece of paper explaining their charity organization that accepts donations of leftover rummage sale items to raise money for families of cancer patients. Their organization is called Compassion in Action and is through the Avera Foundation. And they pick up!  I finally had an answer to that question!!   So we arranged for them to come back to Tea a few hours after our rummage was scheduled to end. They loaded up a very large van and about 3 other cars full of stuff! I don't know who was more excited, me or them! Some of the leftover toys we kept to give to the church nursery. I also kept 4-5 totes of things that I will try to sell online to continue raising funds for our adoption. The Compassion in Action organization didn't take furniture, so we still have a few pieces left sitting in my brother's garage. We will be calling the Furniture Mission to pick up those items sometime this month. 

TEA POT rummage

We are busy getting ready for our second rummage sale in Tea at the end of this week. 

Dates and times for the sale: 

Thursday June 13th 9am-8pm
Friday June 14th 9am-8pm
Saturday June 15th 9am-2pm

My brother and sister-in-law, Jordan and Kimberly, will be our gracious hosts. The address for the sale is 115 St. Nicholas St.


We have a TON of great stuff. And if you made it to the Kingswood sale in April, come to this one too because we have SO MUCH new stuff!

Some of the items we will be selling include: Hide-a-bed couch, futon, shelf, end tables, bar stools, 3 dining tables and lots of chairs, other couches and love seats, Burley bike trailer, Bowflex, adult clothes in most sizes, kids clothes 0-4T and some older, lots of toys, books, baby bouncer, booster seats, jewelry, antique sewing machine, kitchen supplies, home decor, picture frames, miscellaneous household items, and much more!

If you have any items you would like to donate, it's not too late! Items can be dropped off at 115 St. Nicholas anytime Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Just email me if you are planning a drop-off (jessicarwaltner@gmail.com).

If you would like to donate any treats, baked goods, candy, bottled pop or water, we will be selling those as well! Anything individually wrapped would be great! Feel free to drop those off any time before or during the rummage sale.

Please come shopping or just stop by to say Hi! There will be lots going on in Tea this weekend for Tea Pot Days and there is also a parade Saturday morning! Check out the schedule of events HERE.

I also made a bunch of new baby blankets and will have those available at the rummage sale, along with some of the hand-made wooden crosses we have left. Check out the baby blanket inventory page.

We couldn't have done this with out all of your help and have been SO BLESSED by your generosity. Hope to see you this weekend!

home study... DONE.

"Hello Waltners,

I just wanted to let you know that your home study has been officially approved- congratulations!"

Those are the words I have been waiting to hear for the last month! All we need to do is sign a copy of the home study and we are good to go! What's next? We can now start plugging away on the dossier. 

 

Out of the 20 documents I am preparing for the dossier, I have about 15 of them finished. I have already sent the first round of documents to Pierre to the Secretary of State to get authenticated, or state sealed. I can't wait for the post where I take a picture of all the documents with their state seals ready to be sent off!

If you look at number 16 on the list, the USCIS Approval, we are able to send our dossier to country before getting this approval. This process can take a month or longer, so not needing it right away is a good thing. Once we do get the approval to bring an orphan into the US, we just send that paperwork as an addendum to the dossier.  We had been waiting on the home study to be finalized before we could send in that application, but will hopefully be able to do so next week.

Since reading the book "The Connected Child" by Karyn Purvis, I have really become a fan of her work. This website has short video clips of some of the topics she covers in the book about raising children who come from hard places. She is super smart and has tons of experience working with those types of children...check it out!

This week I also added "African Radio" on Pandora. The boys and I jammed out to some traditional African music....pretty fun!