Apostilling Adventure

I drove to Springfield this morning with Mapquest directions to the Secretary of State's (will be identified as "SOS" from now on) office in hand. Everything was great until I pulled up next to the Capital building. I looked at my paper. 0.1 miles, your destination is on your right. I looked at my right. The Capital building again. How strange.

I kept driving, getting into the 200 block, then 300. I called the SOS office. "Um, hello, I am trying to find your building? And I'm having trouble?"

I'm not a customer service expert, but let's just say that the receptionist had a voice that made me think, well, that she didn't like talking to lost people.

In a monotone, "We're the building north of the Capital."

"And how about parking?"

"Parking behind the building is for state employees. There is metered parking in front you can use."

That was great, just great. I normally NEVER carry cash, but today, thinking ahead, I had slipped some greenbacks in my purse. The only problem was that I had one nickel and 6 pennies.

Which, in case you're wondering, is not enough to park. So I did what anyone would do. I drove around to find a McDonald's to buy a frappe I didn't want with money I didn't want to spend. The first funny thing was that I only had $50s. (I feel the need to mention this is unusual, too. I don't want you to think this is our normal currency of choice, but I happened to do a favor for a friend and this was my payment. Oh, the friend's number is - haha, just kidding. It was a good favor.) I paid with a $50. It seemed ridiculous.

So I bought the frappe (mindlessly) and while waiting, I happened to glance down in my hand. My change include one quarter. One! 


I figured, being across from the Capital, that one quarter wouldn't even be close to what I needed. So....

"Ma'am, is there any way you can give me 4 quarters for a dollar?"

She looked at me and was polite. "Yes, but you'll have to wait until my drawer is open again."

So I affixed a grin to my face while I waited for the next customer.

I got four quarters.

Then I set out to try to find the SOS building.

North of the Capital? That meant it was on the...left. And there it was.

I found a meter, gave it three quarters (which happened to give me 1.5 hours. Sorry, congresspeople. I shouldn't have assumed it would be inflated), and met the very (?) friendly receptionist. I didn't see a smile. Come to think of it, I didn't see a frown either. Just...nothing.

This story has already dragged on too long, but since I don't post often, you don't care, right? Right?

The lady who did the apostilling was very nice. Five documents had to be notarized or renotarized for various reasons (the notary was very friendly, too) and 24 documents were apostilled. My birth certificate, since it was from Ohio, can't be apostilled in Illinois. So I have to mail it to Ohio.  Tangent: that means I can't send all this paperwork off to Washington yet. Maybe next week. But the seals on our paperwork look very pretty.

While sitting there (it took awhile - 9 minutes left on the meter when I went back out), I had the opportunity to observe. The funniest thing of the whole day was an exchange between a worker and someone on the phone.

The worker got more and more irritated with the caller. Lots of huffing, sighs, etc.

Finally, the worker said, "Thanks for your advice!" and she hung up.

When she got off the phone, she told her coworker, "That person gave me some customer service advice, so I thought they would like to talk to a dial tone!"

Mercifully, this is the end of the story.

Approval letter received!

How exciting! Today we received our approval letter.

Tomorrow I will email all our documents to our adoption agency to make sure we have everything. Then they will get apostilled. THEN they go to Poland.

I am grateful to have this letter a week before I expected it :).

Fingerprinting appointment - check

We aren't a "GPS" party of two. I love my atlas, mapquest, and the challenge of trying to get somewhere using a compass. Still, I didn't want to get lost today...on the way to our fingerprinting appointment.

So I mapquested it. And then, just for good measure, I tried to find the phone number. I didn't find it. But I did find something like this, "The USCIS Naperville Office is really hard to find. So here are the GPS coordinates. Plus, it's right behind the Lazy Boy Gallery."

Without that helpful bit of information, we'd still be driving around Naperville (which happens to have a really neat downtown and a neat, independent bookstore. At least, we've heard the bookstore is cool. We ran out of patience before we found a parking spot), but the USCIS office is right behind (as in, the same building) the Lazy Boy Gallery. It does not face the street and doesn't even say USCIS on it. So I thank the nameless person on the internet who helped us find our way.

I've heard stories about the fingerprinting appointment. They won't let you in early. Not nice people. 

We were pleasantly surprised. The lady was very helpful and we waited for 20 seconds.

We expect the wait for our approval letter will be longer. Perhaps a month, so probably no updates on here for awhile :).

Fingerprinting appointment!

We knew the letters were coming any day.

Still, when I saw the Department of Homeland Security/USCIS letters in our mailbox, I was excited!

They informed us of our fingerprinting appointment on December 21. In Naperville. We were hoping for Bloomington, but we'll deal with this. No problem.

Approximately 2-4 weeks after our fingerprinting appointment, we should receive our approval letter from the USCIS. Then, we prepare our dossier, send it off to our adoption agency, and they send it off to Poland.

At that point, we should have about 12 months to wait.

Adoption Agency Approves Homestudy!

I just got an emailed invoice today. Normally, I would not be excited about another bill, but this one means that our homestudy has been approved by our adoption agency. Once I receive the official approval letter, we send off our USCIS paperwork. We are getting closer to having the paperwork done, and then we'll just be waiting. And waiting...and waiting.

I thought this would be a good time to share something that Bryan and I have been thinking about.

(Stepping up on soapbox).

One of our challenges with considering adoption has been trading the safe, secure, delightful life we have now, for a future that we know nothing about. We spend a lot of time together; we have little financial stress; we do what we want when we want to do it.

After spending time with friends with young children, I am reminded of how easy our life really is. (And by easy, I mean that we're footloose and fancy-free. Of course, we have challenges and heartaches and frustrations. Just like everyone else.)

We know that adoption will have its own joys, but frankly, it will have challenges that we know we are not equipped to handle. Our life changes go from the mundane differences (having little people who will mess up the house and add more stuff to our somewhat barren house. Yes, we like it that way.) to the major (being responsible for their spiritual upbringing, their health, sleepless nights, crazy days, mental anguish, and perhaps other issues, like attachment problems).

Most people have been positive about this change in our life. Others have not. And if you have reservations, we get that. We have them, too. This isn't an attack on anyone.

But this is what Bryan and I have thought about: Since when has God wanted us to be selfish? Since when has God wanted us to protect what we have by keeping it to ourselves? Since when is the safety, predictability, and ease of our life worth more than a child (or children) who has no parents, who doesn't have a place to call home, who probably doesn't know about God and His son, and who will leave the orphanage/foster care at 18 and NEVER have a place to come home to? What happens to these children?

I admit that I always thought adoption was a "nice" thing to do. I didn't realize that it was so hard. And I never really thought about what happens to children who don't get adopted. Imagine all the decisions they have to make at 18 years old. Alone.

We know we will make mistakes. We hope that when we do that it won't get blamed on our children for being adopted. We pray that people will understand the advantages that their own children have had (being loved, snuggled, needs always met, never starving, secure, not dealing with rejection, trauma, or neglect) and to be compassionate to our children who may not have had those advantages.

I don't think that God wants everyone to adopt. But I do believe (reference James 1:27) that He does want everyone to be involved with the fatherless. There are many ways to do that other than adoption. It can make a difference to one soul, and that is why Bryan and I have started down this challenging road.

(Stepping down from soapbox.)

May you find something today that "stretches" your comfort zone, but advances the Gospel and brings glory to our Father.

Another Baby Step

We are on our way to Minnesota and, because of an aircard (Thanks, Kim!), I was able to check our email and find that our homestudy was approved by the State of Illinois!
Next steps: send our homestudy copies to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and our adoption agency.
Our adoption agency told me that we are probably looking at a 12 month wait...after our dossier gets submitted to Poland.

No criminals here!

I've lost track of how long we've been waiting on our background clearances. Who am I kidding? I've been counting the days: 14 weeks.
At first, it was supposed to take 4-6 weeks. At the 6 week mark, I contacted our social worker. She explained that the wait was now 2-3 months. At the 3 month mark, she contacted someone somewhere (I lose track of the acronyms) who said, "No, they aren't done. And, no, I have no idea when they will be done."
I "patiently" waited until this week before contacting our social worker again. "Is there someone I can call? We can wait, but it would be nice to know how long to expect."
She gave me a phone number.
I called Monday.
The DCFS Advocate called me back on Tuesday.
She was very nice, but our conversation went something like this: "I have no idea how long to tell you to expect to wait. I don't know what the holdup is. I don't know where the holdup is. It could be the FBI part, the state police part, etc. No, you can't call anyone else, because no one knows. And the State Police won't talk to you."
"There's nothing I can do?" I said. I tried to be assertive, yet unaggressive.
"Tell you what," she said. "When you get to the point that this is the only thing you're waiting on, give me a call back and I will see if I can make some phone calls."
Me: "Actually, that is the only thing we're waiting on." And that has been the only thing we've been waiting on for 3 months.
There were more "she said/i said" things, but the most important thing is the result which was...

A PHONE CALL TODAY FROM HER THAT SAID OUR CLEARANCES HAVE BEEN ENTERED INTO THE SYSTEM (today) and that our agency would get it sometime soon. She did not, however, tell me exactly what "soon" meant.

So I emailed our social worker and she said she will be looking for the clearances. Incidentally, our clearance were, well, clear :).

We're new at all this stuff, but I think that our homestudy (along with precious clearances) goes to the State of Illinois for approval. Then it goes to our adoption agency for approval (although that shouldn't take long as they've already seen it once). Sometime in there, we submit our I-800A form. Fortunately, it's mostly completed and documentation for that was gathered months ago.

We like progress, and this is a big step.