Yesterday was a mini emotional roller coaster ride. Cindy, another adoptive parent in our parenting class had given me a phone number to check the status of our clearance. It ended up not being the person I needed to talk to, but he was able to give me another number. After being on hold for 20 minutes I got to speak to a live person. Unfortunately, she was extremely rude. She told me my clearance had been done on 3/3/08, the same day we were fingerprinted. Before I could ask how that could be or have her check on Brian's, she said "Good Bye" and hung up. So I began to get discouraged about the situation and figured my hope for a homestudy by end of March just wasn't going to happen.
On Wednesday night at prayer meeting I gave a very specific request. We prayed that our FBI clearances would come soon and I have been praying for a while that our home study would be done end of March. There is no real reason except end of March for us meant we were moving along quickly.
Yesterday afternoon, completely out of the blue, I get a phone call from Michelle, the program director at Adoption Alliance. She called to tell me our clearances were done and they were able to fax them in to her. She later told me this was after she was talking to an associate who told her it could be 2 months to the FBI clearnaces done. Not only did she have FBI clearance in hand, but since Lori had our home study complete, Michelle had already reviewed it. She e-mailed it to Brian and I and we checked for any factual errors.
A couple hours later we had our second parenting class and at approximately 8:30 last night Michelle was e-mailing our completed home study to Martha at All God's Children. So thanks to a social worker who is FAST and to Michelle who worked late last night for us our home study is at All God's Children being reviewed. We are told to expect 5-7 days for this review to take place. Once our report is approved we proceed with 2 different steps simultaneously:
1) We mail our dossier to AGCI. This is our pile of paperwork which has been ready to go for weeks and is only missing the home study. This gets checked and then translated and authenticated (I'm still a little unsure of what all that means so maybe someone can give me an idea...)
2) We take a notarized copy of our home study report down to USCIS and turn it in. They already have our fingerprints and I-600-A application (see post dated 2/11/08). I will need to go downtown on a Tuesday morning and stand in another DMV like line to turn it in. I have no idea how long it will take to get this pre-approval for a visa for our child because so many other people's waits have varied. This approval comes in the form of a Favorable Determination Letter (FDL). It is my understanding that as soon as we have the FDL in hand we are put on the wait list (again someone please correct me if I am wrong).
We are close!
3 comments:
While you may be a day behind us in the homestudy approval wait, you will probably move ahead quite quickly since we don't have our FBI clearance back yet. I'm hoping ou HS will still be reviewed but maybe not approved until we get it. Should be another week or two until we get our clearance back. So you'll probably beat us to the waiting list...lucky dogs :) Hopefully we will be close though, maybe even "travel together" close.
We are all going to end up on the waiting list around each other! So glad you got your home study in to the office for approval. I hope your FDL comes through quickly. I think we might have to wait for a bit. Our office, in Washington, is now processing some Oregon applications too. I know God's timing is perfect, but all this waiting stinks!
Rejoicing with you in your progress!!
Amy
We just had our last visit today for our home study. Our SW is going to have it drafted up by the end of Monday and probaby faxed to AGCI by Tues. or Weds. I am so excited for you guys!! We only have a couple more things to gather for our dossier and then its off also.
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