On January 13 our application was approved by CCAI to begin the adoption process. We met with them on the 22nd of January and started the questions and the paper chase. They gave us many questioners to start answering. A list of documents we would need and how they would need to be obtained. It all seemed a little daunting but there was a clear path it just needed to be followed to reach the goal of bring a child with no family into ours.
We started with the paperwork that needed to be done so our Home Study could start. Some of this same paper work would be needed for our dossier also. This was everything from a drawing of the floor plan of our house to income documents to background checks. The paperwork chase gave me something to do that is for sure. We were either writing answers to questioners, writing up some documents ourselves or requesting documents from others. Oh, did I mention the 12 hours of online parent training. Seeing how our youngest is 17, this parent training was way past do.
It was mid February before we finished all the online training and the documents to start our home study. A little longer than I wanted it to take but we still did it all in a good time frame. Now our Home Study could begin!
The paper chase is not over by any means. The dossier paperwork includes some of the same papers but there is a four steps those documents have to go through. The first is they have to be notarized, a big shout out to a good friend of ours who has been more than helpful in this step. GO PEGGY! The second step is taking the papers to the county Superior Clerks office to let them certify the notary stamp and add there stamped paper reading that the notary is in good standing and verify the signature of the notary. The third step is taking them to the Secretary of States office to have the county’s stamp authenticated. They add there stamp and letter establishing that the county’s stamp is good as well. The last step in this process is sending them to the Chinese Consult office here in the US to get the Secretary of State’s Seal verified and then the document is sealed and ready to be put in our dossier and sent to China. We are in the midst of getting all of our documents state certified. We have 10 of the documents done to this point with only a few more to go. One of those still needing to be done is our Home Study when complete.
I took a chance sending 10 of these documents UPS to the Secretary of State’s office during this Corona-virus shut down. When I shipped them they were still working just not taking walk-ins so I overnight ed it with an overnight return envelope as well. I kept looking at my tracking number to see if it had been shipped back to no avail. Then the one day I didn’t check it, it showed up. I was really surprised because the day before I had called there office and I was told by the person I spoke to that everyone was working from home now and my paperwork was probably still in the mail room. Thank God someone had picked it up and processed them. They were returned in just a weeks time. Now, how are we going to get the rest done before this is all over, I have no idea. We will have to trust God to provide His timing because He is the one in charge.