What's the Plan

I thought I had good news on the adoption today...and I did...sort of. We've been waiting a long time for our homestudy (the written part) to be done. Our part was done the end of August, the social worker needed to write it up and send it to our agency for approval. She thought it would be done about the middle of September. Well...I got our finished copy today...a week into November.

Finally, it's here, I thought. Also, she sent a copy to USCIS (formally NIS, or Immigration Services) so we could get our fingerprint date either in Omaha or Des Moines. Sometime after we are fingerprinted, a very important document, the I-171H, needed for our dossier, will be sent to us. This is a major step. After we get this document, we can finish the certification (by Iowa Secretary of State) and authentication process (in Chicago), which can take a while. But I was excited to see that we finally had our homestudy done!!

But not quite. The homestudy is notarized. And the person who notarized our homestudy, her commission expires in December of this year (sigh). The notarization cannot expire before our certification and authentication process is complete. And even if we pay the extra money to expedite the process, we most likely will not be able to get it done by that date. So I emailed our social worker and asked her to please re-notarize our homestudy and send me more copies asap so I can start on the certification process.

The good news is, the copy of the homestudy the USCIS received will be fine for them, so it won't delay our fingerprint date, which is very important.

Thanks for letting me vent my frustration. I know God is in control. There's just seems so many delays in our paperwork process. I just want to ask Him (and I did), "What's the plan, Lord?" I know He has one, and His Plan is much better than mine, so I just need to be patient. Maybe that's the plan, to teach me more patience?? If so, give me more patience, Lord, and make it quick! ;) Thanks for all of your prayers. Keep praying.