Our immigration application approval (I think it is called an I-797) arrived on Saturday. We weren't expecting this for another couple of weeks, so it was exciting to see an envelope from The Department of Homeland Security in our mailbox.
We have an appointment with our caseworker this Thursday. If our final referral letter is returned to us by then, our dossier will be complete!! There are a handful of documents in it that we need to sign, so we will do so on Thursday and our caseworker will notarize them. Then we will scan the whole dossier and have our dossier specialist at BCS review it to make sure everything is alright. Here's hoping we don't have to re-do anything!
If everything looks good, our caseworker will get all the dossier documents apostilled (state sealed). We are not sure how long this takes. I don't know if she sends it away or physically takes it somewhere and gets it done right away. Let's hope for the latter! Once it is apostilled, it gets mailed to South Africa and we wait for the Central Authority to approve the match with our little man. We were told they take about 4 weeks to review and approve the match.
Meanwhile, our fundraising efforts continue. We will have a large payment due once the match with Little Kern is official. It is the largest chunk yet and we will still have travel expenses after that (which are estimated to be very high due to the length of time we will be there).
We had some Africa t-shirts made up by a buddy who has his own screen-printing business. They turned out great and we'll be selling them for $20 each. We are also planning a yard sale for Memorial Day. A generous church friend/adoptive family offered their home for the location, as they see lots of foot traffic that day. Our church held a night of worship the other week. An offering was taken and we were also able to sell the jewelry and crafts we had made. We do not have a total figure for the offering yet, but we walked away with over $600 in sales and gifts. What a blessing!
We also spent some time this weekend painting Little Kern's room. It was the guest room and I loved the color, but it was too mature and dark for a toddler. Here's a sneak peek at what we landed on. It isn't finished yet, so I don't want to reveal the whole room until it is.
Keep praying! Things are starting to feel a little overwhelming as they progress! It is starting to sink in little by little. And man, are we in for the ride of our lives!!
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