Still Waiting

We are on Day #18 of an anticipated 10-day wait to receive our official referral from the MOJ. It's looking less and less likely that we'll be able to travel in mid-December as expected. This is just one of the current frustrations that we have right now related to our adoption (though it's the biggest one). I know from experience that you need patience and flexibility when adopting internationally, but the thought of our child spending more time in the orphanage is difficult. I want him home, and I want him home as soon as possible. I don't want to have to deal with the bureaucracy anymore. For some reason, this adoption has had a completely different feel than when we adopted our daughter from Vietnam, and it's not good. I'm frustrated and grouchy, and I want to see our boy.

Great News

We've been approved by the MOJ to adopt the child we had applied to bring home. We don't have our travel dates, but anticipate making the first trip in mid-December. We received the news from our agency last week, but are still waiting for the official referral.

We've heard of other families that have recently gotten the same good news. We'll be sending positive thoughts to those families, as well as the families waiting for news from Bulgaria.

We Will Be Restricting Information

We've just received an e-mail from our agency recommending we keep any specific discussion from being publicly posted. Unfortunately, one of the other families has apparently run into a problem by posting enough info for some petty person to cause some issues. It doesn't appear to be too serious, but I'll be keeping this blog as non-specific as possible. That means no pictures, no names, no specifics on our potential child, no timeframes, etc. I've tried to keep from posting too much already, as I know it could cause problems for families looking to adopt from Bulgaria if the officials at the Ministry of Justice find out that information was posted publicly about a child living in a Bulgarian orphanage.

Also, please note that we have only put in an application to adopt an identified child. We have not received an official referral or authorization from the MOJ.

I know everyone who follows our blog will understand (particularly those in process). I may look to make our blog private, allowing only family and close friends to have access. I will also be deleting any comments on our posts that may contain information that could cause problems, including any references to the name of our adoption agency.

Official Referral Coming Soon?

Just heard from our agency that the Bulgarian MOJ is expected to meet in the next week and a half. Our paperwork is in their hands, so we will hopefully be on their agenda. This will hopefully result in our being officially approved to adopt the boy we put in an application for. Travel dates for our first trip would hopefully be set-up as well.

We've (Hopefully) Found Our Son!

We have made the decision this week to pursue the adoption of a little boy from Bulgaria. We first saw him in an e-mail last month, requested his medicals (which we reviewed with our Doctor) and have decided to put in an application with the Bulgarian MOJ to bring him home. The MOJ will review our application & file at one of their scheduled meetings. If they feel we would offer him a good home, we will be allowed to proceed.

Unfortunately, we are not able to post any pictures or specific information on our boy at this time. We'll likely be providing more frequent updates to our blog now that things are in motion.

USCIS Approval

We received our approval this afternoon! We have been officially approved by U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services to bring our son home. We can now send our dossier paperwork to our agency, who in turn forward everything to Bulgaria for translation. Then, we get registered with the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice and the wait for a referral officially begins.

More Info Needed for I-800A

We received a letter on Monday from USCIS asking for more information to finalize our approval process. Apparently, since our Home Study Agency is not Hague-accredited, USCIS needed a letter from our Adoption Agency (who is Hague-accredited). So we overnighted a copy of our Home Study to our agency for them to have on file. Yesterday, we received an e-mail from our adoption agency with the letter and Hague certificate to forward on to USCIS. We sent those documents to USCIS via Express Mail for Monday delivery. Hopefully, this is all the additional information they need. It would be nice to get our approval before the end of July so we can get our dossier out of our hands.

I-800A Mailed

We've finally gotten our I-800A off to USCIS. Hopefully the approval process is fast and we can look forward to getting our dossier sent out.

Homestudy Complete

Our homestudy was delivered to our adoption agency last night. Our contact at the agency will start reviewing it today. Once she feels it is in good order, we will send it to CIS along with our I-800A. We're hoping to have our 171-H approval within a month. Once we have that, our dossier and 171-H go to our adoption agency to review. If they feel all documents are in good order, the packet goes to Bulgaria for translation. After translation, our information gets sent to the Bulgaria Ministry of Justice for registration. Then the wait for a referral begins!

We've been very fortunate to have great contacts at both our adoption agency and our homestudy agency. Both contacts seem very familiar with what our homestudy needs to say both for Hague approval and approval in Bulgaria.

Classes Done!

We were able to complete all of our online adoption classes this weekend. We've requested the certificate from the company that offers the classes. Once we have that, we'll forward it to our HomeStudy agency. Assuming all our reference letters have been received, we should have everything needed for our Homestudy.

I've realized that I "jumped the gun" of a couple items for the dossier. The FBI Clearance Letter and Doctor's Letters are going to be too old to submit with our dossier. About a month after our I-800A is sent out, I'll request them again. Apparently, they need to be done every 6 months. That means we'll probably end up getting these items at least twice more. I'm not sure if we need a brand new fingerprint card for the FBI Clearance or if we can send in the one we originally sent in. If anyone has first-hand knowledge, please feel free to let us know!