I'm looking out the window thankful that we do not have to be anywhere today. This morning the snow was falling vertically and was beautiful. A very rare occurrence when you live among windmills. Now the wind has picked up and the snow is blowing horizontal. The boys are napping and I am catching up on AWAA paperwork and decided to take some time and blog again.
A few things have happened in the past week. Abby at AWAA received our agreement and first payment. We then were assigned to our official family coordinator Lauren Barnett. We were excited to get her because our friends the Grahams also have her as a family coordinator and they are about a year ahead of us in the process. What a great resource to have! Thankful for Rachel and all her insight and recommendations.
Lauren has contacted us over the phone and by email. She sent us a whole new set of paperwork and let's just say I am a little overwhelmed since I will be doing most of the paper chase for Brian and I. They are requiring approximately 30 documents from us that we do not only have to have filled out, but also notarized. They are not documents we can just fill out on our own either, but doctors, social worker, our accountant, friends, etc will have to be filling papers out too. To give you an idea of how big of a task this will be, our family coordinator sent us 28 pages of instructions just on how to fill out all the paperwork properly. Please do not think I am trying to complain, because it will all be worth it in the end! More or less just venting that I feel like I'm taking on a part-time job, lol!
Yesterday, I contacted Jill at Lutheran Social Services and she will be conducting our required home study. She is coming up to our home on Tuesday to go over the application and paperwork for the home study. Today has been a good day to stay in and go over more paperwork. Made doctor appointments for Brian and I to have the required physicals and working on getting the copies of our birth certificates, marriage certificate, and passports scanned into our laptop to email to our family coordinator. Rachel and our coordinator gave me some good tips of which documents to start with right away and just to take on a little at a time each day. I need to get another small filing cabinet just to keep all the papers organized and together!
I've started to follow the official AWAA blog and their Ethiopia Facebook page and it is full of helpful information and stories. I see families and pictures of their new additions and it is so hard to believe that will be us someday! Just trying to keep our hearts and mind focused on the end result and God's plan so I can get through the tedious and not so fun parts of the process. Really we have so much to be thankful for because we have the resources and everything has been going smooth so far. Thank you for some of your loving and thoughtful comments on Facebook and appreciate those who want to follow our blog. God is good! Stay safe and warm in this winter storm. God bless!
