LOA

This was another big week in our adoption process. On Thursday, our official LOA (Letter of Acceptance) came from China. We quick signed it and headed to FedEx to have our adoption agency send it back to China asap. This very important document tells China that we do indeed want to adopt JiaNi, and they in-turn begin the process of granting us travel approval hopefully within the next 3 months. 

I met the UPS guy at the door and happily said THANK YOU! He probably thought I was a little crazy.

Travis and I signing the LOA. Probably the most important document we've signed since our marriage license back in 2006!

While at FedEx, I also sent our I-800 form to USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). This form begins the process for Jia to become a US Citizen once she lands on American soil.  I had a bit of a stressful moment (and some continued stress) at the FedEx office. I had all the paperwork ready for our I-800 (a whole stack) and our signed LOA both ready to ship to separate places. I checked out, and with a big sigh of relief, went out to the van. I sent a quick email on my phone, and was about ready to drive away...when it hit me. I forgot to make a copy of our LOA to include with our I-800 application! I ran back into FedEx and my packages where still sitting on the counter. I waited in line again and explained to the worker what I had done, and that I needed to re-open both packages. I then made a copy of our LOA, put it in the I-800 package and got new envelopes for both packages. Whew! That was a close one. I told the guy at the counter that I almost delayed our adoption process! We both laughed, and I left FedEx with a pounding heart...but relieved.

UNTIL...I got home and was reading through some questions on our China Adoption Questions facebook group. Someone was asking questions about the I-800 application and mentioned a $385 payment...hmm. Why didn't we have to send a check with our application? I had read the directions and thought we could apply without a fee. So I went back to the USCIS website and read the directions again. I read the first page...yes I think we were good. Then I kept reading to the SECOND page. There was a second page?! Well crap. I indeed SHOULD have sent the fee with our application. Now what?

I called USCIS and talked to a super (UNHELPFUL) lady who told me there was nothing I could do and that our application would be rejected without the payment and that it would inevitably delay our process. WHAT!? I said there is NOTHING I can do? She excused herself to talk to her supervisor. She came back on the phone to tell me there was nothing they could do, but she did give me an email address to the Lockbox facility (the facility that would be processing our application). She said the Lockbox has no phone number, but I could try sending an email. Thanks lady.

Having no other options, I sent an email. I received an automated reply saying it could take up to 15 days to get a response. GREAT. 

Well to my surprise I got an email about an hour later! The lady said I had a couple of options. I could resend all of the paperwork and submit a new application with a check this time. They would just reject the first application. Or, I could wait until Monday when they review my application and she could give me further instructions from there. She also asked for my tracking number on the package. I chose the second option, since by the time I shipped another set of paperwork, it probably wouldn't arrive until Monday anyways. She was very helpful and actually seemed sympathetic to my situation.  So now I am really hoping that I will get an email tomorrow with further instructions on how to send payment for our application. And am hoping it can be done without increasing our timeline for I-800 approval. UGH. I was SO mad at myself for making such a silly mistake! 

International adoption is not for the faint at heart! :) I'll keep you posted on our I-800 application. After I-800 approval (which usually takes 2 weeks), we can start applying for our travel visas for China! 

THE MATCH

Many of you saw our big announcement on Friday that things are finally happening on the adoption front for the Waltner household! We couldn't be more thrilled to share this news with family and friends as this November will mark FIVE YEARS since we decided to start the adoption process. If you read my last blog post from a year ago, you can get a quick update on our timeline over the last five years. 

Here's the picture I shared on facebook on Friday with our big announcement. 

I'll give you a quick update on what our adoption process has looked like over the past 9 months. We officially went "off hold" in January 2017 and were able to complete our home study update on January 24th. We then got busy working on our dossier (mountain of paperwork) for China. Our dossier was mailed on April 20th. It became offically logged in to China about a month later on May 23rd. 

We had a conference call with our international adoption specialist at this point talking about what special needs we were open to and which ones we weren't. (This was not a fun call by the way) Although necessary, it was so hard to check yes and no boxes for certain needs, because you want to be as open as possible while still considering how those needs could affect your whole family. On that call our social worker said the wait for a referral could be up to 15-18 months. Uhhh....that was a little disheartening to say the least. Hadn't we already waited long enough? Still, this is news we had to take in stride and trust God's timing for our family and for our adopted child. 

Thirty seven days after our dossier was LID (logged in dossier), China CHANGED their eligibility requirements for international adoption. The one change that could potentially have affected us was that children currently in the home must be at least three years old. With Paxx being about 10 months old at that time, we weren't sure if the new changes would affect us or if we would be grandfathered in since our dossier was in China and already LID. Our dossier still hadn't been through the review room, so that was the one thing that could hold us back at that point. I was trying not to freak out....would we have to wait 2 more years until Paxx was three and redo paperwork once again? Well within a few weeks we found out that our dossier had made it through the review room on July 27th. We were SO relieved that our process could continue and were so thankful that we just squeaked in under the old rules by THIRTY-SEVEN days.

Ok, we were good....now we just have to wait another year or so for a match. I can do this, I am the queen of waiting. On July 28th, ONE DAY after or dossier had been through the review room, we got a call from our social worker. Of course, I DIDN'T ANSWER MY PHONE. It was an out-of-state number, and I just assumed it was spam. Plus, I wasn't expecting THE CALL for another year and a half!  They tried calling me a few times, but I was busy getting a pedicure (something I never do). Finally an hour later, Travis calls me and asks, "Why aren't you answering your phone?! Our social worker has a file of a little girl she would like us to look at." WHAT?!  

We looked at her file and a few pictures they sent us. We were then able to ask her orphanage some questions to help get a few more pieces of the puzzle. It look three long weeks to hear back from the orphanage. They also sent a short 60 second video. At that point, we had an international adoption doctor review her medical file, pictures and video for us. She got back to us within a few days and gave us the ins and outs of what her special needs would potentially be. Like I said, there were only pieces to a puzzle, with a lot of missing ones. With so much we didn't know, could we still say yes? After many prayers, discussions, research and more prayers...we accepted the referral of JiaNi on August 30, 2017. We received our official LOA (letter of acceptance) on September 1st. 

Her Chinese name is Jia Ni. She is almost 4 years old. She seems to be so very sweet and is already dearly loved by her mom and dad. We are beyond excited to meet her and bring her home to her three brothers and loads of other family and friends. 

The next steps include paperwork, grant applications, a second set of questions for the orphanage, a care package sent to her (FUN!) and more paperwork. We were told it's likely that we will travel to get our girl in December or January. 

We have been overwhelmed these past few days and through the years with the support from all of you. It's almost surreal to finally be at this stage in the process. So many firsts to look forward to! Please continue to pray for us and for our sweet girl over these next few months especially.  

It likely won't be another year until my next blog post (yay for this), so stay tuned...more to come!

Oh, you probably want to see a picture, right?! :)

  

Fun Surprises and Not Fun Ones...

As many of you know, we were blessed with a surprise pregnancy in the midst of our two adoption processes (Uganda and China).  It is our adoption agency's policy that we go on hold until our new baby is 6 months old. At that point, we can pick up where we left off and continue the adoption process again. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, we found out that our Uganda adoption likely won't be happening.

Let's do a little timeline review of our adoption process so far.

• November 2012: We started the very early stages of the adoption process.
• May 2013: Completed our first home study and started working on our dossier to send to Uganda.
• July 2013: Sent our completed dossier to Uganda and began the wait for a referral (child match). Wait times at this point were 3-12 months.
• July 2014: Wait times increased to 12-24 months.
• July 2015: Wait times increased yet again to 24 plus months - unknown...
• October 2015: Decided to start the process to adopt from China, since we were still waiting for Uganda.
• November 2015: Waiting for a referral from Uganda for 28 months and found out we were expecting! (If I am being honest, I wasn't super excited to be pregnant...knowing we would have to put our adoption on hold) Of course we are both excited to welcome baby boy #3 into our family any week now!
• June 2016: Found out that the President of Uganda signed a law stating international adoptions must be finalized in Uganda (instead of the U.S.) and adoptive families must live in Uganda for 12 months for this to happened. Obviously this was devastating news for us. We just can't put any more time or money into this adoption, knowing that it won't be possible to move our family to Uganda for a year or longer.

I cried, I was sad (still am). It's just a helpless feeling. We knew going into this process that Uganda was a pilot program and that things could change. But you never expect to be 3 years into a process and then just have it end so quickly. We are emotionally drained. We had been picturing a little girl from Uganda joining our family for over 3 years...and then realized that it wasn't going to end up the way we had hoped.
I don't understand it, but I do still have hope in God's plan for our lives and our children's (both biological and adoptive) lives. His plan is better and it might take a lifetime (or longer) to see how it all plays out.

So what now? Right now we are focusing on the birth of baby boy Waltner who is due in a few short weeks (August 8th). Once he is around 6 months old, or sooner if our agency will allow it, we will continue with the adoption process from China. We had only completed our home study for China when we found out we were pregnant. So we will update our home study and then hopefully get started on our paper work (dossier) to send to China. Our agency has been doing adoptions from China for a long time and have a good and reliable process in place. There is a lot less risk for the program to change dramatically, which can put us at ease that what happened with Uganda would be very unlikely to happen with China.  

Well, that's where we're at in this crazy life. We didn't plan it, but someone greater did. We hold fast to His timing and know His grace is sufficient. Thank you to everyone who has supported us in building our family through adoption. In some ways, I feel as though I have let you down. But I understand that unexpected things happen and that control of our lives must be surrendered to the God who loves us and knows the desires of our hearts.

1 Year Ago...

A lot can change in a year.  It doesn't seem like it, but it's been almost a year since I last posted an adoption update. We are still waiting for a referral from Uganda, as things have really slowed in that program. A short overview of our adoption journey so far...

November 2012: We filled out the formal application to start the process for an international adoption in Uganda. (wait times for a referral were estimated at 3-12 months)

March 2013: We started the home study process.

May 2013: First official home study completed!

July 2013: Took about 1.5 months to finish the dossier and sent it to Uganda on July 8, 2013.

July 2014: Waiting a year. The wait was extended to 12-24 months. 

July 2015: Waiting 2 years. The wait was extended to 36-48 months.

September 2015: We decided to do a concurrent adoption! We will keep our paperwork in Uganda current, but we will also begin the paperwork for an adoption in China! 

October 1, 2015: We were officially accepted into the China program!


So what does a concurrent adoption mean? We will pursue both adoptions at the same time. But once we receive a referral in one country, we will go on hold in the other country until the adoptive child has been placed in our home for at least 6 months. So while we will be doing both adoptions, there will be some time between placements. 

Because the China program is fairly established, it's likely that we will receive a referral from China before we will get a match from Uganda. Wait times for China are typically 1-12 months. 

We just started the process of updating our home study specifically for China. Once that is finished (in the next month or so), we can begin work on our dossier (huge pile of paperwork) for China. My first dossier for Uganda took me about  a month and a half to complete. I am expecting to finish this one in well under a month! :)  

These 2 adoptions are treated as completely separate adoptions. Separate paperwork, email addresses, fees, etc. We will likely start doing some fund-raising again at some point...rummage sale in the spring, grant applications, etc. Fun stuff! Not really, but totally worth it for these kiddos that just need the love of a family and the love of our Savior, Jesus. 

Please pray that we are perfectly matched with the child God has for our family and that we can have peace about some difficult decisions we will be making about accepting a match for a child that might have some special medical needs.

We are so excited to share this news with you all! 

the waiting...game?

Whoever came up with the phrase "the waiting game," wasn't a very smart person. There is nothing fun or game-like about waiting. I guess if you are one of those people who hates games then maybe it makes a little sense, but not really. 

Yes we are still waiting and my little experiment didn't work. I sort of got tired of having no "real news" to report about our adoption process besides the fact that we were "...still waiting." So I went on a bit of an adoption blog strike. It wasn't totally on purpose. I guess we just have been living life...in a good way. We had a great summer. We all celebrated birthdays, went camping, and got tans. The boys are now ages 5 and 3 with a Power Ranger birthday party in September to make it official. 

Jhett Conley, aka Jaden, the Red Power Ranger - age 3

Ayin Travis (usually dressed as Jack, the Black Power Ranger) - age 5

Here's what's "new" with our adoption process. We submitted our initial international adoption application 2 years ago this November. Two years! We submitted our dossier to Uganda in July of 2013, almost 15 months ago. In November, we will be refiling for our USCIS I-600A, which is the petition to our government to bring an orphan in to the US. It only lasts 18 months, so we get to do it again before it expires. We updated our home study back in June since it was also over a year old. Our home study has to be current within 6 months when we refile for our I-600A, which we can do 90 days before it expires. So that gives us about a 2-3 week window to get our application in. If we would wait any longer, we would have to pay the fee to do yet another home study update....bleh! So, Lord willing, there won't be any delays with any of that paperwork. 

One small (or HUGE) thing we did change in our paperwork was our openness to adopting 1-2 children instead of just 1. That doesn't mean we would definitely get a referral for 2 children (siblings), but it is a possibility! I think it's so exciting and Travis is more on the terrified end of that spectrum...haha. Going from 2 to 4 kids all under the age of 6 would be pretty loco. :) But fun, right?!

Wouldn't it be fun to add another kid or two to this pile? :) Thanks Amie Hansen Photography for the fun photo shoot yesterday!

A good lesson I have learned in all this waiting. Don't put life on hold. It's not fair to the children that are here with us now. Even though I think about and pray for our adoptive child/children daily, life keeps going. It doesn't mean I have forgotten, or that I care any less. It just means that I love my family, I love life, and I have to keep walking forward. I will say I look forward to the day where I can look back at the waiting and see it as a blessing. I already do at some small points here and there. But mostly I am just tired of waiting and don't see the need or the reason God has for it...yet. But just because I don't see the reason, doesn't mean there isn't one. 

de-clutter

I have been cleaning out my closets again this spring. Seriously, how do I accumulate so much stuff in just 1 year! If you are like me and are a "thrower," then you know how much a cluttered house, closet or garage can drive you crazy. Just throw it away, or donate it if you haven't used it in a year (I tell myself).  I just went through Jhett's closet this morning. I came up with 2 large bags of things to save for future children and 1 large bag for the rummage sale. Ahhh...love the feeling of a clean and organized closet. :) I don't think Jhett, being 2, shared the same appreciation.

Don't take offense if you are one of these people, as I am not judging you...but I never understood the point of renting out a storage unit to store stuff that a person never intends to use. Is this a good time to segue into our rummage sale fundraiser? When Travis proof reads this post, he will probably make me take that part out. Love you honey. 

Well we are having a rummage sale to raise funds for our international adoption during the Kingswood Rummages in Sioux Falls the end of April. Our sale this year will be at: 

6601 W 32nd Street

Dates and times:
Tuesday, April 22nd: 12:00 noon - 8:00 pm
Wednesday, April 23: 9:00 am - 8:00 pm
Thursday, April 24: 9:00 am - 8:00 pm
Friday, April 25: 9:00 am - 8:00 pm
Saturday, April 26: 9:00 am - 1:00 pm


How can you help?

• Come shopping! Here is the listing of just some of the items we will be selling: Matching couch and chair, Glass coffee table and end tables, tv stand, childrens clothing, adult clothing, toys, household items, baby stuff, hand-made baby blankets (by yours truly), and much more!

• Bring your donations! You can drop off your donations the day before our sale on Tuesday (April 22) at W Mesa Pass. We could also use any clothing racks to borrow if you have any. Items that tend to sell really well: anything baby or kid related, toys, furniture, brand-name or like-new clothing (especially childrens clothing), collectibles, exercise equipment. But anything works! One man's trash is another man's treasure! 

• If you would like to get your donations to us earlier (if you just want your stuff OUT), I can come pick them up, you can bring them to our house in Tea, or you can drop them off in Travis's office at Embrace Church (labeled RUMMAGE).  I will be borrowing a trailer this week, so I can come get larger donations if you don't have a way of transporting them. 

• If you would like to help price and organize the days before the sale, just let me know. Or if you would like to help during the rummage sale, whether it be for a few hours or all four days, you can email me at jessicarwaltner@gmail.com. 

• If you don't have any furniture, kid stuff, or misc. to donate, we would welcome any snacks, pop, bottled water, or baked goods to sell during the rummage. Anything that is individually packaged would be great. Last year we had gourmet cupcakes and cake pops, special k bars, popcorn balls, cookies and bars. We sold out of all the homemade stuff!

• Pray! We would love your support through prayer. Pray that the adoption process continues in a smooth and timely manner. Pray that the rummage sale is a fun event for all parties involved and that it would be well worth the effort. :)

Check out the Kingswood listings at www.kingswoodrummage.com. They will be available staring April 18th. 

God's Got This

We had our March (monthly) conference call last week about updates for our countries program.  Here are the highlights:

• Our international case worker recently returned from a trip to our adoptive country and she had a lot of great things to tell us about her trip and also some hard things to hear. 

• Referrals are still on the slow side...but if all goes well, there could be 4-5 new referrals in the next 2-3 months. Remember from this previous post, I mentioned we are around number 12 on the wait list. 

• Our agency is working on another partnership with an orphanage that they visited recently. It is over capacity and under staffed. This partnership would take months to set-up, so those potential referrals wouldn't come for another 6-8 months. 

• Court dates are running smoothly for now. Once a family receives a referral, it is taking about 4-6 weeks to get a court date and to travel for that first trip. The first trip is still estimated to take 3 weeks, but most families have been closer to 2 weeks. So that's good news. 

The hardest news to hear, we received the day after our conference call. The international adoption team decided to officially extend the wait time for a referral from 3-12 months to 12-24 months. Yep. I found out about this last night and didn't even tell Travis until today. This sounds weird, but I just didn't feel like talking about it, or saying it out loud. Saying it out loud made it real. 

We have been waiting 8 months, which I thought was a while. But now we aren't even to the minimum point of 12 months...and 2 years...that just seems crazy. I'm not saying we are thinking about giving up...it's not even a question, but I am saying I am a little discouraged. The reason it bothers me is because there are children in orphanages right now... without parents, families. Often without food, medical care, hugs and kisses, being rocked to sleep, being picked up when they cry. 

I wish I could explain all the reasons why it's taking so long to get a referral. Here are a few, and it's more complicated that this, but I'll keep it simple.

• Our adoptive countries negative view of international adoption and adoption in general
• Myths about the fact that Americans adopt internationally because it's cheaper or they don't have the best interest in mind for these children (trust me, it's not cheaper and we love these children dearly)
• It's a pilot program and it just takes time to establish a trusting relationship with orphanage directors
• Background investigations: before a referral is given to a family, each child has a thorough investigation to assure they are truly orphans. This prevents things such as child trafficking or children being sold for money. These investigations take time. If during the investigation, it is discovered that the child is not a true orphan, that referral process is stopped for that child.

I don't have time right now, but I want to say a bunch of things like God's plan is perfect, His timing is too, He is in control...

We'll just leave it at: God's Got This.