Update!

Our Fundraising Carnival was a BIG success! A HUGE thank-you to everyone who helped, donated, and came out to the event!!!!! We're still waiting on a few $$$ from auction winners, but we're close to $2,500 so far! (We'd love to reach the big 3K!) The Carnival success was just the beginning of more great news this week.....

Tuesday we received our second Immigration Approval! This means they approved our Home Study update and have approved us to bring a child from Macedonia into the USA. This does not expire until April 2017, so we're are good to go on the USA end of things!

 More good news is that we are down to collecting just 2 more documents to complete our dossier update - and then we'll send them off to get their state seals! Compiling a dossier is a BIG job and is a daunting task. So, we are very excited that the end is in sight and that we've just about got everything into place! 

We did have a tiny set back with a notary signature being from NJ instead of NYS, so we are working on that, but its not necessarily bad news....is just means a bit more time as we procure the proper state seal and signature. I was pretty frustrated about it yesterday but a good friend reminded me that "we never know why we might have to wait or make a detour. Maybe something tragic is about to happen and God is telling us to wait to avoid something really bad when we are on our journey somewhere good." I appreciated the reminder that even though I am disappointed in the delay, I know that everything is meant for a reason and everything will work out just as (and when) it should. 

 SO, what's next?! 

1.) The #1 PRIORITY is to get our USCIS (Immigration Approval) and Home Study Update county authenticated and then state Apostilled. Once this is done, we will overnight the documents to our International Agency who will forward them on to our translator. Once the translation is complete, we'll send the documents to Macedonia. We'd love for this to happen as quickly as possible as Macedonia is waiting on these documents to make our referral. 

2.) We will continue to work on our Dossier Documents. We have most of the documents gathered and then we'll need to send these for county authentications and state Apostilles...and again to the agency, translator, and then Macedonia. Our Dossier expires in April so we've got to get these documents to them before that date. 

3.) We wait for our referral (Eeeeekkkkk!!!!! We're getting closer!!!!)

4.) Continue to save our pennies and raise the funds! Our most immediate fee will be the re-translation fee for the Dossier (that's an extra $2K (at least) at 9cents word, it adds up fast!) Looking at our estimates, we think that $4.5K will have us fully funded! That's pretty exciting! 

THANK-YOU so much to everyone for your support and encouragement. This journey has been long and hard. We are so grateful for the love and support we have been shown!!!!

Please keep sending those positive thoughts and prayers our way!