Next step!

Well, it is official.  Our paperwork to begin our home study is all in the hands of our social worker.  This may sound trivial and if your not a part of the home study process, you may not know the gravity of how much paperwork that means has been completed.  WHEW!  TRUST ME ... this causes room for celebration and it frees up a gazillion hours in my weeks!  Do I hear an amen?

30 items were gathered and completed; home study questionnaires (I could submit it for publishing and print it as an autobiography), criminal background checks, residential histories, medical exams on every member of our family, marriage licenses, birth certificates, previous home studies, floor plan sketches, employment verification letter, financial records, life insurance policies, fire inspections, health inspections, 1040 tax statements and more.

So, what is the next step?  The actual home study!  Once this is completed, it will be sent with a form called an I-600 to the United States Center of Immigration Services.  It is there that they will process our family, we will do FBI background/fingerprinting and then we will await the infamous letter ... the I-171.  This letter gives us clearance to bring an orphan home.  This letter is our government saying "YES" to LEVI!

Once this is received, our paperwork will be sent to our agency and then off to the long awaited country of Ethiopia.  From there, it's all God .. and all Africa.  We wait, anxiously patiently to find out who Levi is.  Then we wait again for court appointments and our first time to travel, then again for an embassy appointment to travel for the second time.  It is THEN, that we bring Levi HOME!
Oh boy, exhausted already and we've just begun.

So, there is room for celebration today.  Even if its' a small room .. a bathroom, a laundry room - it's room!  So celebrate with us and pray for this next step to be a timely and efficient one.
Come on Home Study ...