I have lost track of how many different forms we have had to file, not to mention the seemingly countless documents we were required to get notarized (Me and Camille at the bank are pretty tight by now). I am happy to say, this weekend, we filed our LAST form. That is right, everything is done!
Assuming we did everything right, the next form we receive will be approval for Quinn to come home! After that, we just wait for a date to go get him. (for those of you following that nifty flow chart, we are now on step 10.) If things move REALLY fast, we could be in Vietnam and with Quinn for Christmas. If things move at a normal pace, I expect we will travel to get him in January.
We are excited beyond belief, and scared to the extreme. But, we are constantly reminded that God is at the helm. He led us to where we are and that brings comfort. This isn't the end of what already feels like a really long story, it is just the beginning. Knowing that this is the right path for us, and that Quinn is meant to be in our family makes all the difference. We can't wait to start the next leg in our adoption journey - being a family. I'm sure many of you already know the challenges that parenthood brings, and we can only imagine at this point. But we won't have to imagine for very much longer :)
We can't express enough, our gratitude for your support, thoughts, and prayers as we have tackled this crazy process to bring Quinn home. We are almost there! We would ask, yet again, for your continued support and prayers as we are on the final leg of this journey.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Thursday, October 27, 2016
The News We've Been Waiting For!! | Reece's Rainbow
It actually happened!!! We got our Match Letter!! Vietnam has approved us to adopt Quinn!! Our wait is only another 3-4months! We are so excited, and a little nervous. Mostly excited!
Next we have a form to file with US Immigration to approve Quinn to come here. We have to wait until next week to get original copies of forms from Vietnam to file this. After that, this step will take about 3 weeks. Then there is one more form that I'm still a little hazy on what it's for, but it will take about a month-ish. After that we get our official US approval that we send to Vietnam. Then we just have to wait for the G&R (Giving and Receiving ceremony) date!
We obviously want things to move faster. It would be amazing if we can bring him home before his birthday, Feb 17. We appreciate everyone's continued prayers that things will continue to move quickly.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel!! Prayer works! God knows us!
Next we have a form to file with US Immigration to approve Quinn to come here. We have to wait until next week to get original copies of forms from Vietnam to file this. After that, this step will take about 3 weeks. Then there is one more form that I'm still a little hazy on what it's for, but it will take about a month-ish. After that we get our official US approval that we send to Vietnam. Then we just have to wait for the G&R (Giving and Receiving ceremony) date!
We obviously want things to move faster. It would be amazing if we can bring him home before his birthday, Feb 17. We appreciate everyone's continued prayers that things will continue to move quickly.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel!! Prayer works! God knows us!
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Semi Update | Reece's Rainbow
Although it is not news of our match letter, we got an update from Quinn's care center in Vietnam! These updates are all about Quinn and his development. They are supposed to come every 6 months, however it's been a lot longer than that since our last one. We were laughing at some of the items in the update, as they seem a little odd, but they do show that he is developing and progressing well.
1. He is a great eater - 3 meals a day of rice, noodles, fish, shrimp, vegetables, etc.
2. He is sleeping 10 hours a day.
3. He can pour water from a bottle into a cup without making a mess.
4. He keeps quiet for a short time only. (uh oh!)
5. He can walk in a straight line for a long distance.
6. He turns corners and avoids obstacles skillfully while running.
7. He likes to play with balls or assemble toy blocks!
We were especially excited to hear that Quinn likes playing with blocks as Mark just made him some! We were organizing the garage a month ago when Mark came across some extra wood. Rather than just throw it out, he thought "what little boy doesn't need some good ol' blocks?!" Turns out he was right.
We are grateful that the people at the care center are taking such great care of him. It is difficult to think about him growing up so fast, and that we cannot be part of it yet. The center also included a couple of new pictures of him, and it is amazing how quickly he is growing up. There is about 1 1/2 years in between the current picture and the last picture we have of him.
Several people have commented and asked how we are doing this (enduring the wait), and that they wouldn't have the patience. We know that we are so blessed that we found our child, and that Heavenly Father is very aware of us. There is a peace and calmness that we feel and we understand that everything is on His timetable. Although we would prefer to not wait any longer, we will continue to be patient.
In an effort to help explain the adoption process, we created the flowchart below. It is kind of a spiderweb and it makes our heads spin as well. We are currently on step 7.
1. He is a great eater - 3 meals a day of rice, noodles, fish, shrimp, vegetables, etc.
2. He is sleeping 10 hours a day.
3. He can pour water from a bottle into a cup without making a mess.
4. He keeps quiet for a short time only. (uh oh!)
5. He can walk in a straight line for a long distance.
6. He turns corners and avoids obstacles skillfully while running.
7. He likes to play with balls or assemble toy blocks!
We were especially excited to hear that Quinn likes playing with blocks as Mark just made him some! We were organizing the garage a month ago when Mark came across some extra wood. Rather than just throw it out, he thought "what little boy doesn't need some good ol' blocks?!" Turns out he was right.
We are grateful that the people at the care center are taking such great care of him. It is difficult to think about him growing up so fast, and that we cannot be part of it yet. The center also included a couple of new pictures of him, and it is amazing how quickly he is growing up. There is about 1 1/2 years in between the current picture and the last picture we have of him.
Several people have commented and asked how we are doing this (enduring the wait), and that they wouldn't have the patience. We know that we are so blessed that we found our child, and that Heavenly Father is very aware of us. There is a peace and calmness that we feel and we understand that everything is on His timetable. Although we would prefer to not wait any longer, we will continue to be patient.
In an effort to help explain the adoption process, we created the flowchart below. It is kind of a spiderweb and it makes our heads spin as well. We are currently on step 7.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Monday, August 8, 2016
One Month Mark | Reece's Rainbow
I know everyone is anxiously waiting for updates. Trust me, I wish I could give them to you! Today is the one month mark of waiting for our Dossier to be approved. The approval comes in the form of a "Match Letter," meaning Vietnam has approved our match with Quinn. Because Vietnam is in the middle of a pilot program with their adoptions since joining the Hague, their timelines are quite unhelpful. They say we should have our Match Letter between 3 and 12 months from our submission date. Ugh. We have also been told to expect Z.E.R.O. updates until the much anticipated Match Letter arrives.
We are still being so blessed with a sense of peace. It is amazing that when you know you are doing the things the Lord wants you to do, nothing else matters. While we are excited and anxious to bring Quinn home, there is a process that is required to do it, and that's okay. It is long, and frustrating, and full of unknowns, and slightly terrifying, but the one thing we do know is that this is God's will for us; and that makes all the difference.
So in the mean time we are fundraising (you can check out dates for our gourmet bake sale open houses on Facebook or Instagram @callievanwag), still slowly getting Quinn's room ready (almost done!), and still basking in our childless state while it lasts. By the way, if one more person tells me to "enjoy it while it lasts" or "you won't be able to do those things once you have kids," I might lose it. We are well aware that our world is about to be turned upside down. We have been waiting for it for a long, long, long, long time. We are doing our best to "enjoy it while it lasts" while anxiously looking forward to our lives changing dramatically, we hope for the better. I hope that isn't too harsh because I know everyone means well. We just, well, know (mostly) what we signed up for :)
We are still being so blessed with a sense of peace. It is amazing that when you know you are doing the things the Lord wants you to do, nothing else matters. While we are excited and anxious to bring Quinn home, there is a process that is required to do it, and that's okay. It is long, and frustrating, and full of unknowns, and slightly terrifying, but the one thing we do know is that this is God's will for us; and that makes all the difference.
So, here is to our one month mark! We appreciate you joining your prayers with ours that things move quicker than expected and that we can bring Quinn home!
Sunday, July 3, 2016
The Dossier | Reece's Rainbow
It's been a little over a month since my last post! In all honesty, I have been stalling until I had good news to post, which we do! Our Dossier (Doss-ee-ae) is DONE and is en route to Vietnam.
Here is how the last month has gone to get this crazy thing done
Previously we collected all the "easy" documents like our home study, birth certificates, copies of passports, marriage certificate, etc. We had these notarized and ready to go and were just waiting for the last document we needed from USCIS (immigration). This finally came on a Friday at 4pm. We jumped in the car and went to get copies (our printer/copier decided not to work). Next we had to get it notarized. We got to the bank, but all the notaries (yes, I know who they all are) already had people they were helping, and there was one person ahead of us waiting. Luckily this cute girl that has notarized a lot of stuff for us recognized us and asked the person she was with to wait since she was pretty sure we just needed a notary. Bless her! Now we just had to get all the way to the state capital building downtown through rush hour traffic on a Friday before they closed at 5pm! Ahh! Mark did great and even performed an illegal maneuver so I could run everything in. I walked into the office at 4:57 and have never been so relieved and grateful! It was a very stressful hour, but we definitely felt the blessings as what seemed impossible worked without any problem.
This one mad dash hour was followed by a week waiting for them to add a fancy stamp authenticating the documents and notaries. Once they were ready I picked them up and was ready to send them on to the Vietnamese embassy in Washington DC. However one of the notaries forgot to do something on one of Mark's documents so before we could send it we had to have them correct it. Because of this and our work schedules it made more sense for Mark to do it and send it to the embassy. This was a little stressful for me because I had probably read the instructions on what to do and how to send them at least a dozen times. Mark, thinking me more than capable, hadn't read them at all. I started telling him everything he had to do and his response was "What if I lose everything?" I about had a heart attack. After some slow breathing I informed him that "that isn't even close to funny." While I knew he was joking, I wasn't going to take any chances so I typed up a step by step list of everything he had to do. Of course he did it perfectly and didn't even lose one thing.
The embassy said it takes on average 5-7 days for them to process our documents. We obsessively checked the tracking number for the return envelope to see if it was on its way back to us. On the 9th day we saw that it was on its way!!
Now we will send everything to our agency who will send it to the Department of Adoption (DOA) in Vietnam. We are hoping it will be logged into their system quickly as our agency has already been working on translating everything into Vietnamese. After that it's anybody's guess as to when we will be "matched" in Vietnam's records. We have heard that a big and lengthly step for Vietnam is doing a Police Report which we believe has already been done for Quinn. That could potentially shorten the wait, but they could also ask for additional documentation that would have to be notarized, state authenticated, and authenticated by the Vietnamese embassy all over again.
Please pray for the Vietnam officials that they will move quickly and not need anything else to approve our match with Quinn! Let the long (hopefully short) wait begin!
Here is how the last month has gone to get this crazy thing done
Previously we collected all the "easy" documents like our home study, birth certificates, copies of passports, marriage certificate, etc. We had these notarized and ready to go and were just waiting for the last document we needed from USCIS (immigration). This finally came on a Friday at 4pm. We jumped in the car and went to get copies (our printer/copier decided not to work). Next we had to get it notarized. We got to the bank, but all the notaries (yes, I know who they all are) already had people they were helping, and there was one person ahead of us waiting. Luckily this cute girl that has notarized a lot of stuff for us recognized us and asked the person she was with to wait since she was pretty sure we just needed a notary. Bless her! Now we just had to get all the way to the state capital building downtown through rush hour traffic on a Friday before they closed at 5pm! Ahh! Mark did great and even performed an illegal maneuver so I could run everything in. I walked into the office at 4:57 and have never been so relieved and grateful! It was a very stressful hour, but we definitely felt the blessings as what seemed impossible worked without any problem.
This one mad dash hour was followed by a week waiting for them to add a fancy stamp authenticating the documents and notaries. Once they were ready I picked them up and was ready to send them on to the Vietnamese embassy in Washington DC. However one of the notaries forgot to do something on one of Mark's documents so before we could send it we had to have them correct it. Because of this and our work schedules it made more sense for Mark to do it and send it to the embassy. This was a little stressful for me because I had probably read the instructions on what to do and how to send them at least a dozen times. Mark, thinking me more than capable, hadn't read them at all. I started telling him everything he had to do and his response was "What if I lose everything?" I about had a heart attack. After some slow breathing I informed him that "that isn't even close to funny." While I knew he was joking, I wasn't going to take any chances so I typed up a step by step list of everything he had to do. Of course he did it perfectly and didn't even lose one thing.
The embassy said it takes on average 5-7 days for them to process our documents. We obsessively checked the tracking number for the return envelope to see if it was on its way back to us. On the 9th day we saw that it was on its way!!
Now we will send everything to our agency who will send it to the Department of Adoption (DOA) in Vietnam. We are hoping it will be logged into their system quickly as our agency has already been working on translating everything into Vietnamese. After that it's anybody's guess as to when we will be "matched" in Vietnam's records. We have heard that a big and lengthly step for Vietnam is doing a Police Report which we believe has already been done for Quinn. That could potentially shorten the wait, but they could also ask for additional documentation that would have to be notarized, state authenticated, and authenticated by the Vietnamese embassy all over again.
Please pray for the Vietnam officials that they will move quickly and not need anything else to approve our match with Quinn! Let the long (hopefully short) wait begin!
Monday, May 23, 2016
The Abolitionists | Reece's Rainbow
Mark and I recently went to see the movie "The Abolitionists" which is about child trafficking. There was one part of the movie that particularly stood out to me. During one of the missions of "The Underground Railroad", the team was in Haiti searching for a kidnapped child. They suspected that an orphanage was involved in trafficking children and went to investigate. They received some tips as to where they might go to get some additional information. Posing as prospective "buyers" they negotiated the purchase of two children. The entire process took less than 2 weeks, and they paid $15,000 per child. Of course this is completely illegal, but part of me was thinking "Wow, that would be so nice!" Then I actually thought about it, and said "That is why we are doing what we are doing."
Prior to 2010, Vietnam was not a participating country in what is known as the Hague Convention. Here is a little information on what this is:
The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Convention) is an international agreement to safeguard intercountry adoptions. Concluded on May 29, 1993 in The Hague, the Netherlands, the Convention establishes international standards of practices for inercountry adoptions. The Unites States signed the Convention in 1994, and the Convention entered into force for the United States on April 1, 2008. Read the full text of the Convention here.
While it would be nice to stroll into an orphanage and find our children, not everyone is in it to become parents. Some people walk in looking to pay nominal "fees" to purchase a child in order to enslave them and profit from their prostitution. While the waiting is completely terrible, protecting these children is worth every second we have to wait to bring Quinn home.
Assuming many people are like us when it comes to understanding adoption fees, let me give you an idea what these fees are, and what they are for:
Agency Application - Fee to review our initial application to adopt
Adoption Home Study - Lots of questions, and more questions, and a visit to our home
U.S. Processing - Facilitation of adoption with agency and government officials in the US and Vietnam.
USCIS - Application for approval from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to bring a child to the U.S. for adoption.
Adoption Education Classes - Pre-parenting classes
Dossier Preparation - Collection of lots of paperwork that must be notarized and triple authenticated.
Program Fee - Legal services and communication working with government and agency authorities. Legal fees. Passport and US visa fees.
Travel expenses - Fees associated with traveling to Vietnam, as well as expenses during our required stay.
Adoption Finalization - Legalization of the adoption
Vietnam Adoption Estimated Total: $28,165-$38,010
We are going through this long drawn out and very expensive process so that these children end up in good loving families instead of in the hands of child predators. And just to be clear, we don't pay for Quinn. We pay attorney and agency fees, but we don't buy a child. We are happy that Vietnam is now a Hague Convention country, and facilitates in the safe adoption of kids like Quinn!
I encourage everyone to go out and see this movie! It was very eye opening and helped us understand and even appreciate the process we are going through to get Quinn. But, even more this movie is spreading the word on this absolutely horrific and prominent problem in our world. Watch it!
Prior to 2010, Vietnam was not a participating country in what is known as the Hague Convention. Here is a little information on what this is:
The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Convention) is an international agreement to safeguard intercountry adoptions. Concluded on May 29, 1993 in The Hague, the Netherlands, the Convention establishes international standards of practices for inercountry adoptions. The Unites States signed the Convention in 1994, and the Convention entered into force for the United States on April 1, 2008. Read the full text of the Convention here.
While it would be nice to stroll into an orphanage and find our children, not everyone is in it to become parents. Some people walk in looking to pay nominal "fees" to purchase a child in order to enslave them and profit from their prostitution. While the waiting is completely terrible, protecting these children is worth every second we have to wait to bring Quinn home.
Assuming many people are like us when it comes to understanding adoption fees, let me give you an idea what these fees are, and what they are for:
Agency Application - Fee to review our initial application to adopt
Adoption Home Study - Lots of questions, and more questions, and a visit to our home
U.S. Processing - Facilitation of adoption with agency and government officials in the US and Vietnam.
USCIS - Application for approval from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to bring a child to the U.S. for adoption.
Adoption Education Classes - Pre-parenting classes
Dossier Preparation - Collection of lots of paperwork that must be notarized and triple authenticated.
Program Fee - Legal services and communication working with government and agency authorities. Legal fees. Passport and US visa fees.
Travel expenses - Fees associated with traveling to Vietnam, as well as expenses during our required stay.
Adoption Finalization - Legalization of the adoption
Vietnam Adoption Estimated Total: $28,165-$38,010
We are going through this long drawn out and very expensive process so that these children end up in good loving families instead of in the hands of child predators. And just to be clear, we don't pay for Quinn. We pay attorney and agency fees, but we don't buy a child. We are happy that Vietnam is now a Hague Convention country, and facilitates in the safe adoption of kids like Quinn!
I encourage everyone to go out and see this movie! It was very eye opening and helped us understand and even appreciate the process we are going through to get Quinn. But, even more this movie is spreading the word on this absolutely horrific and prominent problem in our world. Watch it!
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