I thought you might like to know a little about what will be involved in the process to adopt Joshua. I am new at all this, but here is my understanding of what will take place.
1. Choose a placement agency, basically an adoption agency. We will be using International Adoption Network (IAN).
2. Choose a Homestudy Agent. (Some agencies can handle both the placement and the homestudy, but in our case IAN does not do homestudies where we live so we need to find someone else.) We will be using Lindsey at God's Children Adoption Agency Inc.
3. Begin the homestudy. The homestudy will take at least 2 months to complete. There will be 3 meetings, lots of paperwork, and the training required by the state for adoptive parents.
4. While we are working on the homestudy we will also be completing our dossier. A dossier is a goofy name for all the paperwork the governments require before approving us to adopt. In the end, we need to satisfy our state government, the US government, and the Ethiopian government. The dossier contains items like health reports, birth certificates, our marriage certificate, etc...
5. File I-600A with USCIS. The USCIS is the US Citizen and Immigration Services. This form is us asking approval to bring an Ethiopian orphan into the US.
6. Complete homestudy, dossier and receive I171H from USCIS. The I171H is the USCIS's approval of our form I-600A.
7. Dossier is sent to Ethiopia.
8. A child is referred to us. We will receive a picture and whatever information the agency has about this child. We have 2 weeks to take the information to our doctor or whatever before we accept the referral. (I know I refer to the son we will adopt as "Joshua" but we do not have an individual child placed with us at this point. I prefer to use the name Joshua instead of talking about "the adoption" all the time. Joshua is the little boy we are trying to get to... the adoption is just a bunch of legal work.)
9. We sign a Contract of Adoption.
10. Court occurs in Ethiopia, adoption approved.
11. Child's new passport and birth certificate and exit visa are issued.
12. Embassy provides immigrant visa for our child to come to the US.
13. We finally travel to bring him home. Travel will take place 8 weeks after the Ethiopian courts have approved the adoption, at which point he will legally be our son. It takes another 8 weeks for the paperwork to all get done. This is the phase I am dreading! We(not sure who we is at this point) have to be in Ethiopia on Monday and can leave as early as Friday. I am assured that Ethiopia is a safe place to stay. We will have bilingual guides provided by the agency, and the vast majority of our time will be spent getting to know Joshua.
This was a lot to read! It is a lot to swallow for us too, but we are taking it one form and one check at a time. All we have completed at this point are steps 1 and 2! I rest in the knowledge that God has it all figured out, the timing, the finances, and even the forms.
