PROGRESS

As many of you know Maya Grace's adoption was riddled with conflicts and delays. The journey to Ally Kate has gone so smoothly and I am thanking God for every step.  We were fingerprinted by USCIS on 9/9 and our agency told us to expect a two month wait for approval.  I was in shock when I pulled our approval out of our mailbox on Friday, 9/20!  Two months was reduced to ELEVEN DAYS!  Since our agency is out of state I made the decision on Monday to do the certification of our documents myself to save more time rather than sending them to the agency.  I took them to our county courthouse yesterday for certification and drove them to the state capital today for certification by the Secretary of State.  (I will explain by those not in the adoption world.  Documents must be notarized.  They have to be certified on county level which is a paper stapled to the front of your document.  This paper documents that "yes" the notary who notarized your document is indeed a notary for the state.  You must go to the Secretary of State who says that "yes" the person on the county level was certified to give her approval. The final step is for the documents to be sent to the Chinese Consulate who says that "yes" these documents are properly certified and they add their paper to the front to "authenticate" the documents. Once all three steps are completed your documents are ready to be sent to China). I  found the local Federal Express office and sent the three documents overnight to the courier who handles documents for the Houston Consulate.  Since we only have three forms and the consulate is closed three days next week for a Chinese holiday I chose to have the documents expedited.  The courier will drop them off on Friday and pick them up on Monday.  FedEx will overnight to our agency and they will be in our agencies hands on Tuesday!  We should be DTC next week! It is so unbelievable that it is happening so quickly.

                                                     The trio holding the completed forms!

We are getting in major planning mode here for the addition to our family!  Our agency had initially estimated travel in Mid-March to Mid-April but with the USCIS approval coming six months earlier than planned we will move that up to a  February/March time frame.

We have asked for an update on Ally Kate but it has not come yet.  We are anxiously awaiting.  We are not allowed to have contact with her at this point.  Once our documents are sent to China we will receive a log-in date.  Once they along with our dossier from Maya Grace are reviewed we will receive a LSC/LOA which is the official approval from China for us to adopt her.  We currently have pending approval.  Once LOA is received we can send her a care package at that point.  We then must submit more forms to USCIS and then a few more steps before China sends travel approval.

As most know this is a huge leap of faith for us financially since we just adopted Maya Grace from China on 12/24/12.   We have been in major fundraising mode.  We are proud people and do not like asking others for help.  As I have said before it is NOT about us.  It is about this little girl who has lived eight years without a family.  We have swallowed our pride.  This is about HER.  She is the same age as my Anneli.  I can't imagine my sweet, precious Anneli living without the love and nurture of  family from birth until this stage of her life.  We can't wait to give Ally Kate the gift of a FOREVER FAMILY! Please pray for us and send your positive thoughts as we travel on this journey to her.  If anyone reading this feels inclined to help us with a donation we would be extremely grateful no matter how small.  We have two accounts set up for tax free donations - Project Hopeful - http://projecthopeful.org/matched-families/campbell-family/  and Reece's Rainbow - http://reecesrainbow.org/63380/sponsorcampbell-2 .  I also have three direct sale businesses to help earn money for our fees - Thirty-One www.mythirtyone.com/35081 , Usborne Books www.w3493myubam.com and Trades of Hope www.mytradesofhope.com/angelacampbell .

T-Shirt Fundraiser!

We are having a T-Shirt Fundraiser.  We have just a few M, many L and XL.  They are $15 shipped an $10 for anyone local.  We will combine shipping costs.  You may pay by paypal (ajajd464@bellsouth.net), check,  or by donation into our Project Hopeful or Reece's Rainbow accounts (both tax deductible)

Updates

Giveaway - Thank you so much to all who made donations to us! The winner was CHRISTINA POULSEN! She chose the Bitty Baby Twins and is giving them to her daughter who will turn 7 yo this month! Winner of the $25 Toys or Us Gift Card was Beka McCullough.   She is a very gracious and humble person.   She told me to keep the card and use it in our auction that is to come.  Each donation from the smallest to largest brought us one step closer to Ally-Kate!  We are humbled with the generosity that has been shown to us. 

Adoption Progress - We were fingerprinted by USCIS (US immigration) on 9/9.  We will now wait for their approval.  Our agency is estimating that we will travel March or April.  Ally-Kate's birthday is 3/2 so we are praying that she will have joined our family by that date.  

Just Love Coffee Fundraiser!

We have another raising funds opportunity with Just Love Coffee. You can fuel your caffeine addiction and help us to bring our newest daughter home! From their site "We source only the finest Fair Trade, Direct Trade, organic, and shade-grown coffee beans from the best growing regions around the world. We research the co-ops we work with and are diligent about sustainability. That’s all before the coffee even arrives on the Just Love Coffee doorstep. From there, we inspect the beans and do sample cuppings. Then our master roaster Jason works his magic, taking an artisan approach to create smooth, flavorful, specialty coffees of the highest quality."  
. We will receive a percentage from each item ordered.  Link here - Just Love Coffee!

Progress and Process

Each day we are getting closer to bringing our newest daughter home!  Our home study update was completed and our initial form was sent to USCIS (immigration) by our placing agency yesterday.   Now we wait.  USCIS will send a receipt and a fingerprinting appointment.  We will go for fingerprints which are done electronically at the local USCIS office.  An officer is assigned who will approve our application which is basically stating that we are eligible per the USA guidelines to bring an orphan into the country.  This process will go a little quicker for us since our current approval does not expire until 9/4. 

Once this approval is received our updates and previous dossier will be sent to China. We then wait some more!  This process is a "hurry up and wait" game!  China will send us a notice of Letter Seeking Confirmation which is the official approval stating we can adopt our daughter.  We currently have pending approval.  We file an additional form with USCIS with our daughter's specific information.  Once approval is received back from USCIS  that is sent to China.  Travel approval comes next.  A consulate appointment must be secured and at that point travel arrangements made.  Unfortunately many of these steps take not only weeks but months.  Our agency is estimating travel in March or April.  Our new daughter's birthday is the beginning of March and I am believing God that she will be joined with our family so we can celebrate her birthday with us! 

Backing up some now for those not familiar with the process, I will share the paperwork that we have already completed.  Each person in our household required new medicals.  We had to provide six new reference letters.  A letter was required from my husband's employer. We have awesome friends/familyco-workers who have now taken the time twice to submit letters on our behalf.  For those people I am so grateful.  We had to go to our local police department and be fingerprinted and ran through the state system and FBI.  A child abuse/neglect clearance for each of us had to be obtained from the state government. We had to obtain a letter from our local police department saying we had no current cases pending.  We had to obtain a letter from our bank showing all of our deposits for the past year.  Copies of our last two years of income tax returns were needed.  Detailed financial forms were required. We had four social work visits  For our placing agency it was required to complete what ended up being an 18 page parenting plan among various other forms.  This process is NOT for the weary but such a major blessing in the end! 

Please keep us in your prayers and thoughts! 

Getting Real........

For those that are familiar with international adoption this will be no surprise.  When we adopted the first two girls in 2004 and 2006 the cost was around $20K.  Now the cost with travel is around $30K.  We just adopted Maya Grace on 12/24/12.  To say pursuing this new adoption is a gigantic leap of faith is an understatement.  In my human mind looking at the cost scares me greatly.  My spirit knows if God places a task before you and you obey, then He will provide and make a way.  I am  focusing on the later.  We can easily absorb the cost of caring for an additional child on a daily basis since we home school and live a very frugal lifestyle.   There are few people who have $30K lying around to adopt a child.  There are those who are against fundraising and judge those who do.  I say to those  - "How many people who give birth could afford to pay their entire hospital bill with cash?"  Parents depend on the "pot" of insurance payments that many make to pay for their prenatal care and  hospital delivery bill.  Are these people judged and told they should NOT have a child because they can not afford to pay cash for the medical care to give birth to a child?  Our "hospital" bill consists of agency fees, fees to be fingerprinted by our state, application to USCIS, orphanage donation, travel costs, costs of authentication of paperwork, application for a Visa to travel, etc.

We have been blessed to have received a $4200 grant from our agency but that still leaves us to pay $25800.  When you consider than many people pay over $30K for a new car that same amount to pay as a "ransom" for a child, a human life, is minimal.   To sum it up we will need our "village" to help us get this child home.  We are very proud and independent people.  Asking for help is not anywhere in our comfort zone.  It is NOT about us.  It is about this child who was abandoned in the hospital at birth and is eight years old and has never known the love and nurture of a family.  We will put our pride aside for her sake.

Ways our "village" can help:
1) Tax deductible donation to Project Hopeful - http://projecthopeful.org/matched-families/campbell-family/
2) Tax deductible donation to Reece's Rainbow - http://reecesrainbow.org/63380/sponsorcampbell-2
3) I am a consultant for Usborne Books and any order will help us - https://w3493.myubam.com/NoEvent
4) I am a consultant for Thirty-One as well - https://www.mythirtyone.com/35081/
5) My big girls and I have set up a Facebook page and we will be selling a variety of items there - https://www.facebook.com/CampbellKidsCorner
6) Order from our Amazon Affiliate link.  We receive a percentage from each order.  Link on right side of page.  Click on the Amazon search box.
7) Last but definitely not least - We covet your prayers and positive thoughts as we continue on this journey.
* NEW VENTURE - I have been on a weight loss journey with the help of a few of these products - I am now a distributor and can help you as well! As of today I have lost 21 pounds in 31 days! It has been so easy! https://www.omnitrition.com/ajcampbell

How We Found Our Daughter!

As stated before we knew that since we adopted from China in December of 2012 that we had the option to adopt a Special Focus child and reuse our dossier for up to one year.  This had been in the back of my mind since returning home from China.  I was looking a lists of waiting children within days of returning in January. While we were in China we visited our newest daughter Maya's orphanage as well as our oldest daughter, Mary Bailey's.  There is absolutely no way to shut out the images of all the sweet little faces waiting on families. Those faces haunted me daily and continue to do so.  I am borrowing this photo from a friend's blog.  It was taken at Maya's orphanage.  We saw similar images.

There were babies in this stainless steel rolling cart.  Each of these beds were occupied although some children were not in their beds.  We saw newborns wailing and no one acknowledging that they existed. Older children were lying in beds sucking fingers and other self-stimulating behaviors making no sounds. They had learned to not cry.  It is easy to close your eyes and pretend it is not there but seeing firsthand is life-changing.

We knew that if we were going to reuse our dossier then we had to make a decision.  In May we were approaching the six month mark and I began to pray.  I asked God that if it was His will for us to adopt again to please place a child directly in front of me and let me know without a shadow of a doubt that she was ours.  I also prayed and asked God that if our family was complete to please let me know the door was closed.

One Friday night in late May I was looking at photo listings on Reece's Rainbow.  I saw a child listed as "Darcy".  I knew without a doubt that she was my daughter.  I could not get her off of my mind the entire night.  The next morning I emailed and posted on RR's Facebook asking how I could see her file.  I was told that she had been matched with a family.  I was very sad in a selfish way but happy for her.  The next week I contacted a few friends who I know are advocates in the adoption.  I asked if they knew of any children available for adoption in the age range we were seeking.  I was sent multiple files but none felt like a fit for our family.  I then looked at our previous agencies individual listing of children and saw two new girls.  I emailed and asked for their diagnosis.  Neither was a fit for our family either.   The worker asked me to please email her a list of conditions that we were willing to accept and age range.  This was done.  She immediately messaged back and told me that they had an eight year old girl's file who they had not had time to post on their listings yet.  I was asked if I would like to see it.  I stated "yes" and the file was sent.  I opened the file to see "DARCY"!!  She had been matched with a family through a different agency but the family could not continue.  Her file had been given to our agency to try and match!   I knew at that moment that it was meant to be.