Moving Forward to the End

Two posts ago, I mentioned that we had received our USCIS (Homeland Security from US) approval after just 10 days.  Well, I seemed to have jumped the gun a bit.  The phone call from country was just a confirmation of information received.  The I600 paper was sent to USCIS on Dec. 1 with a 4-6 weeks processing time, adding 1 extra week for the holidays.  That put our wait from this past week to the 3rd week in January.

Upon returning home from our holiday trip, we found out that there might be a hold up with USCIS due to our income amounts as seen on the last 2 years income tax returns.  With My Man being self-employed as a builder, these last 5 years have been rough on us.  Thankfully he's a man committed to living debt-free and not living above our means.  During all the good, booming years of the building economy, he saved up.  When the economy plummeted, we had savings to live off of.  This has become tricky with our adoption process and grant applications because they always ask for the last 2 years income tax returns.  The last 2 years were our worst and one even shows below the poverty level.

The Lord has blessed us financially this year but without pay stubs (being self-employed) it's hard for us to show that to others.  We mentioned this to our agency, who in turn contacted the USCIS to see if we might run into problems.  They said yes we probably would.  The last week has been spent collecting additional financial documents to send to them so that we won't experience hold ups and to prove to them that we can afford a household of 10 people.

I was shocked to find in the mail the I600 approval from the USCIS yesterday, since the additional documentation was going to be mailed out in the next day or so.  YIPPEE!!!  We are so thankful for that fast processing with no hold ups and so grateful that our agency has been on top of this issue.  We will continue to send the USCIS our additional documentation to prevent any further delay when other papers are processed through them.

Today we received more adorable photos of the boys.  They look so happy and healthy.  I have concluded that the care package we sent them had clothes too small for them because they have not worn them in any of the photos.  That means they are growing and thriving in foster care and that makes this Mama really happy.  They were posing with muscles showing and big grins on their faces.  Adorable.

Their birthday will be in about a month and my prayer is that the Lord will bring them home to us so we can all celebrate together.  It may be far fetched, but just the prayer of a mother in waiting.  I bought this Christmas ornament to support an adoption fundraiser.  It kind of describes where we are now.  It's so exciting to think that next Christmas we will look at this ornament and remember the waiting that has long since been over and get to hold the 2 precious brown faces of our boys....Fish Sticks forever!