A little bit of progress...

It's been awhile since we had anything to update, but we are finally making some forward progress! Last week we received some medical updates, pictures, and a new video. That is always the best part for us, getting to see our girl making progress. Today we received our official dossier approval! That means we have been approved by the Colombian government, and can be 'officially' referred to Brielle. They estimate that will happen in about a month, so hopefully by the end of May. That would be an awesome birthday gift for me!

After we receive our referral we have two more things we have to do before travel. One of them will be to get visas for us to travel. The other is get US customs and immigration approval for Brielle to come into the United States. They estimate that can take anywhere between 2-6 months. We are praying that it will come in two months (from the end of May) or sooner! We will go as soon as we can!

Please be praying for all the paperwork to continue to get approved quickly, and for continued improvement for Brielle's health. She is doing great, but we are ready to get her home!

Thanks for all your support and prayers!

One year ago...

It is hard to believe that is has been a year since we officially started the adoption process. We applied on March 23rd, the day Scott turned 25. It is possible that I had our application complete by January, even though I couldn't apply until March. I thought it was a good time to look back over the past year and commemorate all of God's faithfulness. There has been so many small things I don't know if I can list them all, but here are a few big ones.

1. Our goal for 2013 was to have our dossier finished. Then the government shut down and the FBI stopped processing fingerprints. We thought for sure this would keep us from meeting our goal, but we received FBI clearance in the middle of December, and finished getting everything certified by December 31st!

2. Finding Brielle. There are so many God moments in our choosing to adopt Brielle, but I will share one story. When we were first married with both liked the band Sky Sailing, and one of their songs was titled Brielle. We both decided we liked that name, and tucked away for potential children. In April we found a little girl on the waiting list names Juanita Gabrielle. We knew she had medical complications, so we wanted to consult a doctor. We took several months praying over the decision before applying to adopt her specifically. Her name just confirmed our decision because my great-grandmother's name was Juanita. Then one day Scott spoke up and asked if I remembered the name we liked Brielle. I remembered, but didn't recognize the connection. He said that Brielle is from the name Gabrielle. I knew then that this little girl was supposed to be my daughter.

3. Fundraising. We knew we would have to raise around $36,000, and our prayer when we first began was to finish debt free. After a few months of fundraising I didn't believe that would be possible, so we began looking at our options for adoption loans. I set the resources aside to look at later, but I am now happy to say we will not need those! As of yesterday we have completed our fundraising goal! That is a testimony to God's faithfulness because there is no way we did that on our own. Thank you to all of you who personally gave; you have played an important part of our story. We cannot wait to tell Brielle about all of you! We may still have some unseen medical costs, but our travel and agency fees are now fully funded!!!

Praise God for all that He has done in the past year! We cannot wait to see what the future holds, and hopefully we will be in Colombia this summer. Please keep praying that our paperwork will be processed quickly, so we can go get our daughter!

The Waiting Season

We are in the waiting season now. Our paperwork should be to the orphanage for evaluation this week, but it is out of our control about when they will review it. They may ask for additional paperwork, which will increase our waiting. Some exciting news is that in addition to our matching grant from Lifesong, we received a $500 grant from Families Outreach!

I am currently using the YouVersion App for my morning devotions, and going through the She Reads Truth: James devotion. I love it because it's just the right amount of reading for my mornings. Today's devotion was so relevant to our adoption adventure that I wanted to post it here. I thought it was very interesting how she tied waiting and judging together.

The Waiting Season
I’m waiting.

After months of tracking down hundreds of pages worth of birth certificates, references, financial and medical records, getting them signed with the right color pen in front of a notary, then getting the notary stamp state-certified, then putting the big brick of papers into the properly addressed envelope and mailed with tracking to the proper address, I’m waiting.

The referral for our adopted daughter could come today. Or it could come in six months.

I’m waiting.

It’s easy to say, “It’s in the Lord’s hands!” and “Or she’ll come home in His perfect timing.” Speaking these truths confidently makes the waiting a little easier, but waiting patiently and being an obedient servant? That’s a bit more difficult.

Because when we are forced to wait is when our flesh likes to take over. As pressure builds, we turn on those we care about most, grumbling against one another. We look at others and judge out of our own aching, empty parts. We forget that our own Judge is standing at the door, with His hand on the handle.

We get exasperated in our impatience, swearing, negotiating with the Lord, carelessly throwing around thoughtless phrases like “Oh dear Lord, if I have to wait another day!” or “For heaven’s sakes, this shouldn’t be so hard.” We’re wrong in this. The waiting isn’t just the hardest part, it’s the growing part. And the Gardener can’t be rushed in this season. He won’t be rushed in this season.

We should think of the waiting as our labor pains. The contractions are getting stronger, closer together, more and more painful, the longer the process continues.

While we are waiting, we are changing--He’s changing us in the waiting. He’s rounding out our sharp, controlling edges, gifting us an appreciation for the small milestones, teaching us to better disciple those already in our lives. He’s tenderly waiting for His land to yield its valuable crop.

And in the end, as He always is, He will be compassionate and merciful. Then, together, we will celebrate the harvest.

What promise are you waiting for the Lord on?  How is He changing you in the interim?  Let’s praise Him for every blessed second of the wait and all He’s doing in the meantime.

It's been awhile…but good things are happening!

So I haven't posted anything on here for a while, but it's not because nothing has been happening. After Christmas we began planning in earnest for our big February fundraiser. It is our final big fundraiser, so we wanted to do it right. God has really moved our hearts towards the cause of adoption, not just our adoption. We wanted to share our hearts and calling towards adoption as part of our fundraiser night. It look a lot of prep, possibly more than our wedding, but I had some awesome help. God came through in some big ways, especially that all of our food was donated! We had around 80 people attend the dinner, and our silent auction was also a great success! We did a style of auction called Pick-A-Prize, which is like and auction/raffle combined. If you would like more info let me know! Overall, we raised about 1/4 of our travel cost. That doesn't sound like a lot, but since our travel will cost around $10,000 it was an awesome start! Thank you so much to everyone who came out and supported us that night!

Our other great news is that we have received a matching grant from Lifesong for Orphans! Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta is providing the funds through Lifesong. We were awarded a $2500 grant, so if we get all of that matched we will get $5000. That puts us so much closer to be able to finish debt free. Our goal from the beginning was to do this adoption without taking out a loan, but I have doubted that along the way. It just goes to show that God is always bigger than our expectations! If you are interested in giving we will be putting up a Paypal link on the blog, and on our website Our Adoption Adventure.

Our paperwork should be finishing up translation in Colombia, and be passed along to be reviewed anytime now. Please pray that we will find favor with the officials, and the paperwork will be processed quickly. You can also continue to pray for the health and development of our little girl, Brielle! We officially announced her name at the fundraiser. We cannot post pictures until after her adoption is finalized though.

Thank you for all your support and prayers!

Timeline Update

We have officially reached the end of the paperwork since I mailed in our dossier yesterday! I thought that I should give an update on our timeline.

We are predicting that it should take about three months for our paperwork to go through translation and approval in Colombia, and then they will send us the official referral for our little girl. I can't wait for that day! Our specific prayer request here is that they will accept our dossier without the numerical scores for our MMPI2 test. (A psychological exam we had to complete). We have heard that they can misread your number, so we chose to leave ours out. However, they can send a request for them, which will delay the approval and why we need your prayers.

Then the agency said that it can take 5 months to get our visas and a court date in Colombia. I don't know if I can wait that long, so that is where we need your prayers again. Scott's work is flexible so we can be prepared to travel quickly. We want to get our girl home (mostly because we can't wait to have her here), but also to start therapy for some of her special needs. The longer she is in the orphanage the more she could be delayed. Let's pray that we will get a court date soon after our referral!

Finally, don't forget about our final fundraiser! A Valentine's Dinner...For the Love of a Girl. You can check out all of the details on our website www.ouradoptionadventure.org or on Facebook.

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!

Making some progress!

Small steps...but any forward movement is encouraging! Yesterday we received Scott's employer reference in the mail, so now we can mail it back to CA to be apostilled. Then we also got our appointment from the USCIS to have our biometrics taken. This is the final step for USCIS clearance, which is one of the more lengthy steps. We are still waiting on fingerprint clearance from the FBI, so please pray that we will get that soon. After we get all of the clearances we can take all our paperwork to the state department in GA to have it apostilled, and then get it sent off for translation. We are praying to get that done before Christmas, but that deadline is quickly approaching.

Also, we have been doing well in our fundraisers. The tshirts have been ordered, so if you haven't paid we would appreciate a check anytime. You can message me on Facebook for our address. We should be able to get those distributed before Christmas (hopefully)! We have about $2000 left to raise before we can submit our dossier to Bethany, so we are also praying that we can get that raised so it doesn't hinder our progress. After that payment we will begin raising funds for travel, which we estimate to be around $10,000. We are planning a fundraiser for January, so I will post more info on that in the coming weeks.

We have been very blessed by personal donations thus far. We are hoping to get a matching grant, which people can donate to for our travel costs. We will post more info about donations after December 15th.

Thank you for your support and prayers!

Will the paperwork ever end?

We are in the midst of the "paperwork" stage of the dossier now! Plus we are applying for as many grants as possible, and it seems that each application requires the same questions with just enough variation that I have to rewrite them all! But we are excited to be making progress each day, and hope to get several grant applications mailed off today. We did our FBI fingerprints last week, and have our doctor's visits next week. Please keep praying that our clearances will go quickly, and smoothly.

Some exciting news is that our Bethany representative is visiting the orphanage where our little girl is today. We are going to get some updated pictures and videos, and we got the chance to send some questions for the representative to ask. I wanted to know what size she is wearing, so I can start looking at all those cute girl clothes! In case you are wondering we are not allowed to post any pictures of our little girl until she is legally adopted, which will happen in Colombia.

I mentioned on Facebook that our goal for selling shirts is 200, which will bring in over $1000 for the adoption. Please keep spreading the word!

Thanks for all your support and prayers!

Home Study Approval!!!

Hooray!! We found out today that our home study has been approved!!!! This is what we've been waiting for all summer, so we are super excited. Now we send it with out I800A form to the USCIS, and that begins our dossier process. I am just super excited that we can get moving again. But now we are also hitting the reality of fundraising. I am going to start looking at different options, but we have tentatively planned on selling tshirts, and coffee through companies that support individual adoptions. So be looking for more info on the blog in the following months...think Christmas gifts :). We also hope to get a matching grant, but all of this will take lots of applications. Time to get to work! I am going to try to put a graph on here to show how we're progressing, but I have to nail down some of our figures first. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for a speedy approval...it worked!

Trust

Trust seems to be a common theme in my life right now. My church is doing a series on trust, trust comes up in prayer time, and discussions with friends. Obviously, adoption is a journey based on trust. For us the decision to adopt was easy. We knew we were being called to adopt (rather than become pregnant with) our first born. Then we had to select an agency, and Bethany was a natural fit. It is a nation-wide agency with lots of resources, but the office in Atlanta give a small agency atmosphere. Choosing Colombia was easy, staying with Colombia took some trust when they changed the age availability, but we have always felt a peace about adopting from Colombia (and we have looked at ALL our options). We are now "done" with our home study, but still waiting on last minute forms to be sent in so we can be approved. We have to be approved to really start our dossier, so for now I am learning to trust during the down time. 

During this time the only tangible thing I can do is pray, but that is hard for me because I want to pray for a specific child. I want to KNOW my baby, even if I can't be with her right now. (I say baby loosely say we may get an older child, but he or she will always be my baby.) I don't know if God is calling me to trust and wait for a child to be referred, or trust that he will provide for the medical needs of a child on the waiting list. No matter what child we get there are going to be difficult times. I thought at first that putting together the dossier would be the hardest part, but now I realize that becoming a parent is the hardest part. But also the most rewarding part. I know there are circumstances where more than one option could be 'right', and God gives us the intelligence to choose. I don't know if that is the situation here, or if God will absolutely reveal to me who our child is. So many babies on the waiting list need a home, it's hard not to choose all of them. If you have any divine wisdom for me then let's go get coffee. 

On another note I am reading the book The 7 Experiment, so I am excited to see how God will grow my life through that. I may just blog about some of those lessons from time to time.

Thank you for reading, and as always for praying. If you have any questions feel free to ask!

God Bless,

Allyson

Beginning the dossier...

So we begin Phase 2 of the paperwork...the famous dossier packet. Except if you are not involved in the adoption world then it's not really famous to you. The reason that it is famous is because it is a lot of work, and the work has to be done very carefully. Once our home-study is officially approved we can really get going, but today we officially began our dossier preparation with a conference call. We love that our agency has someone to guide us through all the steps, and answer even my most detailed questions. 

We have to get our fingerprints done again, which we had a good laugh about because to do that we have to go to our local tobacco shop. Always a fun time. Especially because there is a sign that says tobacco customers always get priority over customers getting fingerprints done. My original goal to finish the dossier was six months, but I am hoping I can get it done even more quickly. The agency told us that there was a family who got it done in two weeks! But a lot of the process depends on how long the FBI takes to process your fingerprints. I am just excited that we are finally moving into this phase. Just one step closer to our child! 

It is a weird reality to know that (most likely) our child is already living somewhere in Colombia. I just pray that he or she is receiving good care, and the rest I leave in God's hands. I can't wait to actually find out who our child is, and start decorating his or her room. We have some furniture in there, but I have held off on actually decorating. Just one more thing to look forward to!

We appreciate your prayers for an expedient dossier process without any major road blocks or governmental changes in Colombia. I will try to keep everyone updated as we complete each step. (I think there is almost 30!)