A little update

This last week has been extremely busy for our family.  We are gathering documents for our dossier, and then we are going through the process of getting the documents notarized, certified and apostilled.  We are trying to get all the tasks completed for the dossier so that when our I-800 approval arrives we will be ready to send the entire dossier packet to Albania.

Some of the documents on the dossier are easy to acquire while others are more difficult and time consuming.  I think the one that will be difficult this time will be the updated medicals for both me, Rob and the kids. We all had physicals last year for our home study, but our insurance will not pay for any more physicals for us or the kids until a calendar year has passed since the previous medicals were done. The calendar year will not be up until June.  Just to take the kids to the pediatrician to have a physical and the required TB testing done again will be $600 out of pocket.

I did manage, however, to set up an appointment for Rob and myself. I will just need the TB testing, HIV testing, and drug screen done, because I recently had an office visit with my physician.  Rob will be getting what is called a combat physical, which will be coded as an office visit, and he will also have to have the same testing as I do. Then we will need to coordinate with the doctor to make sure that the notary is there when the paperwork is filled out. Oh, and I did I mention that there cannot be any mistakes or white-outs on the paperwork? It is just standard procedure for an international adoption.

Sometimes, the amount of stuff that we have to do and the amount of money that we have to raise for the adoption overwhelms me, but then all I have to do is pull out Lucy's picture or play one of her videos and the strength to finish this starts pulsing through my veins.  She is my daughter, and I will do whatever is necessary to bring her home, even if it means humbling myself to say that we need help in raising the funds.

We started a fundraiser event on Facebook Sunday night called 150 Envelopes for Lucy, and it has been amazingly successful.  We are asking everyone to just take an envelope.  The envelopes are numbered 1-150. If you take envelope 7, then you are committing to a donation of seven dollars. We are asking that the checks be made out to our agency instead of us. Once you verbally commit to an envelope, we mail the envelope to you with a self-addressed return envelope that you put your check in and mail to us. As of my post tonight, almost half of the envelopes have been taken.  All of these amazing people are blessing us by their generosity and desire to have Lucy united with her family.  And, God is showing us one again his plan for us, which we have known since the first time we laid eyes on Lucy.

We pray for Lucy daily, and we have also begun praying for the director and the sisters who run Lucy's orphanage. These women have a huge responsibility to care for these children, and every adoptive parent who has been to Lucy's orphanage has praised them for the great love and care they show the children. We are thankful that Lucy's situation is better it seems than the one our son was placed in after he was born.

Please continue to pray for us as we still have a few mountains to climb on this journey. The one thing that our 150 Envelopes for Lucy fundraiser has taught me though is that we are not alone on this journey.  We have a whole community of friends and family walking along beside us.