It has been a while since I have posted on here. After we passed court there were a few things
we still needed to do on our end. We were
still waiting on our approval from the government saying it was ok for us to
adopt. I spoke to the officer that was
in charge of our case and she said everything was looking good, and we would be
approved within the week! I was so excited, things were moving fast!
After the adoption was approved we had to get the court
decree and file another set of paperwork
that would approve Henry to be adopted.
(seems backward doesn’t it?) But that’s the way they do things in
certain countries. I had told my POA (power
of attorney) as soon as he got our decree to email it to me and I would file
our other paperwork (I600) this process could take 60 days to get an
approval. I had the application filled
out ready to send as soon as I got our decree.
I received the decree in November, so I mailed our I600 in
the next day. I didn’t have the new
birth certificate for Henry but my officer told me I could email it to her when
I got it. I received a letter saying
they received my I600 application on November 20, 2012. So now starts the countdown. It was
December 19, 2012 and I had still not received the birth certificate so I called
my officer, because you only have a certain number of days to turn in all of
your missing documents, and I wanted to make sure I still had time, the guy
that signs all the birth certificates in Ghana was gone out of town the week
they told my POA to come pick it up and would be out of town till January 7,
2013. I was a bit nervous! While talking to her, she told me she had
everything she needed for our case and was approving it the next day!!! That
just made my day!
After Christmas our youth group at our church was going to a
youth conference and I was going as a chaperone. We got back on December 29, 2012 and guess what
was in our mailbox? You got it, our approval!!!
I started emailing the embassy in Ghana the next night,
requesting our visa packet pick up. Our POA
has to pick it up before we could request a visa interview for our little Henry
to be able to come home. The embassy
responded the next day saying they hadn’t received our approval yet. I knew they wouldn’t have it because it takes
a couple of weeks for it to get to them.
I waited and emailed them the next 3 Sunday nights, and received the
same message until Thursday January 24, 2013 and the message said… your POA can
pick up the visa packet on any Wednesday, so I sent that email to my POA and he
told me he had a test the following Wednesday so he needed to pick it up the
next Wednesday!
You are probably thinking it’s just an extra week but to me
that was HORRIBLE!!! So he picked up our visa packet on February 6, 2013. I sent an email to the embassy requesting a
visa interview on their next available date.
Most of the people I have talked to get a response within the week and
the interview is usually a couple of weeks out.
So I was really hoping for an email from them the next morning, but
trying to not get my hopes up. (YEA
RIGHT!!!) The next morning, I woke up I told my husband to hand me my phone, I wanted
to check my email. And I was totally shocked
when I seen that our visa interview was scheduled for February 12, 2013!!! I immediately
sent our POA an email telling him, because the kids have to have a visa medical
done before they go to the visa appointment.
This medical report usually takes a week to get, you can go to the visa
appointment without it but they have to have it before they will print his
visa. So I told my POA to just take him
and if it wasn’t ready we will just have to take it back for the printing. He took Henry for his medical Friday and I sent
him a message and asked him this morning if he was able to get the medical
report and he said they had it ready for him to pick up today!!!
We are so excited that we are this close to bringing our son
home to be with his forever family! His
visa interview is tomorrow February 12, 2013. We are praying and asking you to
pray for his interview to go smoothly and for his visa to print this Friday the
15th.
As you may or may not know, the next step is bringing our
little guy home, and this is one of the most expensive parts of the process, we
are trying to do a few things to help with the cost, one of the things we are
doing is getting up a Gold Canyon order, if you are interested in ordering feel
free to email wendycookfam5@gmail.com
or text or call me 423-506-2649. Any help is very much appreciated!!!
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