Dossier Update

Well, our dossier is complete, but that does not mean that it is ready to go to South Africa. We're close, but not quite there yet!

Everything was compiled when we met with our caseworker this past Thursday, which felt pretty good. I had it all organized in my trusty binder, every document in a protective sleeve. Our caseworker notarized some documents and then scanned the dossier to our dossier specialist at BCS in Michigan.

Once the dossier is perfect, someone from our local BCS branch will take the dossier to Harrisburg and get it apostilled. Two irritating things about apostilling documents: First, it is not cheap. Pennsylvania charges $15 a document and we have 26 PA documents (Almost $400 that we were not anticipating). Secondly, we have two documents that are not from PA, so they must go to their respective states. One to Ohio and one to Nebraska. (Wish we had realized this weeks ago)

Most of the dossier documents look great, but there are a few things we need to address.

• An employment letter and a reference letter that the Secretary of State "may or may not" have a problem with for different ridiculous reasons. It's all in the details, people.
• A reference letter that needs to be apostilled in NE and a birth certificate that needs to be apostilled in OH
• Dave's passport expires in November so we need to get that renewed and then send a copy after the dossier is already sent. Mine has already been renewed.

All in all, this short list is not horrible. Hopefully, the NE and OH documents will come back quickly. I already sent the birth certificate to Ohio and they claim that they process them within 2-3 days. Nebraska's Secretary of State apparently processes it and mails it back out all in the day it is received. Yay, Nebraska!

Pray for patience in this stage. It is frustrating that days and weeks go by while our child is without a family. All for paperwork. It certainly shouldn't be this difficult to put children in loving homes, but that's just the way it is, so we need to accept it and trust in God's timing. All we can do is plug along, all the while praying that God is preparing our little person's heart and mind for what is to come. And we will continue to watch his videos, trying to imagine what his little personality is like and what he looks like when he smiles. Oh, how I long to see that smile.

**UPDATE: The birth certificate from Ohio and the reference letter from Nebraska have both been apostilled . The PA documents were apostilled 3/27/13 and there were no issues!! Praise the Lord!!**