The Paperwork is Complete!

God is so good! My prayer since we started this journey in March was to finish the paperwork by the end of 2013, and God has proved faithful. We received our I-797 (clearance from US Customs & Immigration) today! Many of you know that the government shut down delayed our process a bit, but I should have known that God's timing will always prevail. Thank you for all your prayers and support; they have helped us reach our goal for 2013.

Now we will get all of the paperwork certified and send it off for translation, and then to the Colombian government. We have two big prayer requests as far as the paperwork goes in Colombia. Our doctor's clearance will expire Jan 29th, and our employer reference will expire Feb 19th. Please pray that the Colombian government will process our paperwork before those dates. The other request is that the Colombian government will approve all our documents the first time. There are times that paperwork has to be redone or clarified, and that extends the process considerably.

Our final news is that our website is up and running! Check it out at www.ouradoptionadventure.org. Wishing everyone a Happy New Years!
Allyson & Scott

Your Prayers are Working!

We received two important documents in this mail this week! God is so good to get these in before the holidays! First we received Scott's employer reference with the apostille (government certification). We've heard that CA can be picky about apostilling documents, so we feel very fortunate that ours worked the first time. Also, I've mentioned many times that we've been waiting for FBI clearance. I've been trying not to get my hopes up about getting the clearances before Christmas. When the government shut down they stopped processing fingerprints, so we knew they would be backed up. Normally the clearances take 6-8 weeks, and we just received ours today (only about 7 weeks)! So now we send those off to Washington, D.C. to get them apostilled by the federal government. Your prayers have been surely helping us!

The final document that we need prayers for is our I-797. We got more fingerprints done with the USCIS, and that is the last step before getting the I-797 clearance. We are hoping to get the document by the beginning of January.

Please also pray for our girl during this Christmas season. We have no idea if they do any type of celebration at the orphanage (it is a Catholic orphanage). Our main prayer is that she would have a full belly and know that her mommy and daddy love her. I won't be able to send anything to her until she is officially referred to us by the Colombian government.

My last bit of news is to save the date for February 8th. We are going to have an awesome Valentines Dinner fundraiser at our church (Momentum Eagles Landing). We are hosting a pick-a-prize auction, and will have childcare as well. The proceeds from this fundraiser will go towards our cost of travel to Colombia. Hopefully this will be our last fundraiser before going to get our girl! Please plan on coming to support us!

Merry Christmas from the Hamilton!

Pictures & Fundraising

No forward progress to report in the paperwork department, but we are praying for FBI fingerprint clearance before December. We appreciate any prayers to speed that us!

Last Saturday we took pictures with our friend, Jordyn, who is an awesome photographer. She took some pictures for us to help us document this important part of our lives. Then she and Scott did portraits for several different families. She is especially awesome because she is donating half of the proceeds to the adoption! Here are some of our pictures:

Scott and I were looking through our funds after a convicting sermon on Sunday, and we just have to glorify God for all He has done in our adoption process. As of September 18th we had completely drained our funds that we had saved because we had to pay for our homestudy. Our next big payment will be when we submit our dossier, and we are praying that will be before the end of 2013. At times I felt like we would never be able to raise that money before Christmas, but God's timing is always right. We have currently raised all of the funds that we need for the dossier payment!!!! Next we will work on raising money for our attorney fees in Colombia, all our travel costs, and the cost of our post-adoption visits. I finally feel like our trip is in sight, still in the distance, but at least in sight. We cannot wait to meet our little girl! I can't wait to spend Christmas 2014 as a family of 3!