I-600A Form

I've been looking forward to writing this post. This will be a good read for any of you who are curious about the process of adoption as well as for those who love to read about God's hand in things.

When you adopt, there is a mountain of paperwork. As Russel Moore says, committing to adopt is committing to signing your name over and over and over again. And getting it notarized. And applying for clearances. And getting fingerprinted, twice. And having your picture taken a bazillion times.

One of the major hurdles is getting approval through the US Customs and Immigration Service which falls under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. For us, that meant filling out the I-600A which is called the Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition. You fill out the paperwork, write a huge check, and send it to your caseworker. She completes some things that she needs to put on it and sends it to Washington D.C. Someone at the DHS looks at it, sends you a letter saying that it has been received, then forwards the original form to a place in Missouri called the National Benefit Center. They process immigration cases. A few weeks later you get a letter in the mail with a date to go have your fingerprints taken (again) and then you wait some more. You may remember a post from a few weeks ago about our experience with asking to get our fingerprints done early. 

If not, you can read it by clicking here.

Well, on the day of the concert, Rebekah got a phone call from a very nice lady who identified herself as Officer Gray. Rebekah nearly hung up on her thinking it was a telemarketer. Officer Gray informed us that the I-600A was nearly complete but that she needed to have a single line of text added to our home study to make it complete. If we could get it to her that day, via fax, she could complete it and stick it in the mail. Rebekah called me (I was at work), I called our home study agency, and within two hours, the matter was settled and the form in the mail on the way back to us. This was a big deal because it means we can move on to the next step that will eventually result is us getting a court date in Ghana and establishing plans for the first trip.

As soon as it was 8:30 a.m. on the west coast, I called Kelsey to give her the update. She laughed at me for having yet another as-soon-as-she-walks-in-the-door-call. I told Kelsey what transpired and the rest of the conversation went something like this:

Kelsey - "They called you?"

Me - "Yeah. Just a couple hours ago. It's all taken care of."

Kelsey - "They never call families! Ever. In rare cases, they call an agency but never a family. And the process usually takes weeks. They send out this pink form that we dread getting asking for further evidence and that gets processed back through all the bureaucracy before it gets to the officer who requested it. It can hold up the process for weeks."

Me - "Oh. Well it took us about two hours."

Things keep happening. The unexpected has become more and more normal. We are hoping to travel to Ghana before the beginning of the school year so that I don't have to take time off of work. Kelsey says the next hurdle will take 2-3 months. That would put us into September. I won't be surprised though if we get to travel in August.