Non-Objection Letters Received!

Hi everyone,

We received the non-objection stamped letters back from the Rwandan embassy last Friday and what a relief! So that step is taken care of. While there are still some approvals to be received that one was the first and it really has made this all become more real to Heidi and I. We continue to pray daily about this and our faith in GOD has really helped us deal with the anxiety and emotions that creep up on us from time to time.

Heidi worked really hard over the weekend to get all the paperwork (application to adopt) organized and into a binder for the Rwandan government. She mailed that out Monday to our contact in Rwanda who will hand carry it to the appropriate ministers office in the Rwandan government. We are incredibly thankful to have help over there and are truly blessed by that. In addition Heidi mailed out the application form that the US government requires today. That application has a nice little price tag attached to if of $830.00 plus postage.

So what happens from here you ask? Ok here is the deal. Both of the applications will, if all things go well, take approximately 6 weeks to process. That puts us into the first week of July. If we get approval then we work with our contact over there to move forward and contact the orphanage to pick the children and get them tested for HIV (we will have our contact have them tested for other diseases as well) . At that point then our contact will also look to get a court date set for the adoption and notify us of that. Then we have to start planning out trip in more detail.... There are other things involved with this process, this is sort of the boiled down version. I will update the blog when we get some more news.

In the meantime, we have also made great strides in our fund raising. We are having a Magic Show and auction at the Red Blazer here in Concord on June 14th from 6-9 pm. I will provide more info on this in the next couple of days including some of the items that will be up for bid during the silent and live auction! Once again, Heidi has done the majority of the legwork on this by going around to local businesses asking for donations for the auction. We have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of companies that are willing to donate. Despite how we are often perceived in the world this country is still the most giving on the planet and we are finding that out first hand. We are truly thankful for everyone that has contributed to date and will provide a list of the companies that have done so soon so stay tuned!

God Bless and have a great Memorial Day weekend everyone!