To anyone just joining our journey,
welcome! Yesterday we were featured on WSET ABC13 news, and have already
received a wonderful response from it. To read the full story and watch the
video, check out the link here: Campbell Co. Family Raising Money to Adopt
We hope to see you this Saturday the
25th for the smoked meat fundraiser! Like our facebook page Bring Tavin Home for updates, and I will post more info here on the blog as well.
Also, if you just joined us, you can check out the post "how we arrived at adoption - introducing Tavin" for back story.
Here's a little overview of the process and our progress recently:
- Oct 7th - committed to Tavin through Reece's Rainbow, and also started the home study through Forever Family Adoption Services (they were fantastic!!)
- worked through home study paperwork, and the huge list of documents required for our dossier, which is a packet that gets sent to Tavin's country
- Jan 2nd - Received our completed home study in the mail
- Jan 4th, mailed a copy to USCIS (United States Citizenship & Immigration Services)
- Jan 6th - home study received at USCIS
- Jan 8th - called to make sure it was matched to our application, which we sent in October. They said it was, and we should receive a date for biometrics in the mail soon.
- Jan 13th - received our biometrics appt in the mail just 7 days after they received our home study! Date was for the 29th, but we plan to try walking in early
- Jan 16th - drive 2 1/2 hours to walk in, thankfully they took us right back, and we were in and out in 15 minutes! Phew!
So
now we are waiting to receive an approval from USCIS, which will be the
last dossier document to send to Tavins country. While we were working through the home study process, we were also gathering, notarizing, and apostilling dozens of documents required by his country. We sent them over in several batches, the last packet just arrived there last Sunday.
From here, our facilitators in country will finish translating the paperwork we have sent, then when we send the approval form from USCIS (hopefully in the next week or two!) we should be ready to be "submitted" which means we have met all the requirements from his country and will be put in rotation to receive travel dates. From that point we could be traveling in 4-12 weeks. Yes its a wide window! We will be able to guess based on when the other families who were submitted before us are receiving dates, but really it's anyone's guess. Dates are often handed out in what seems like a random pattern, with one date 1 or 2 weeks out, and another 4 weeks out. Basically when they say jump, we say HOW HIGH?? and grab plane tickets to GO! We would LOVE to be traveling as soon as possible to bring Tavin home. Please pray with us that we get approval from USCIS this week. I will call today again to check on the progress of it.
We are sitting right at $15,500 in funds raised!! We have received such incredible support from friends, family, the local community, and people we have never met across the US. Our local community has been amazing...truly amazing!! Thank you to everyone who has gotten us so close to our goal!! Only $5,500 and we will be fully funded and ready to travel at a moments notice!
~Chrystal
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