Our First Two Puzzle Pieces Sold to Brian Taylor & Family!
First off, we would like to thank Brian & Jamie Taylor’s family for buying our first two puzzle pieces! I’m so excited! Sorry for the semi-blurry picture! Anyone who knows Mason knows what a typical 4 year old he is. It was quite the adventure trying to get a decent picture where he was: 1) smiling, 2) not wiggling all over, and 3) holding the pieces so that I could (sort of) see them!
I’m also sooooo excited to say that, after starting a year ago, we should be finished with our home study this month!!! And no, it is absolutely not typical for a home study to take a year. According to our agency, they should follow a 90-day track….oops… Ours took much, much longer for several reasons: we started our home study before we had decided on which international agency we would be using and before finalizing our country choice, we had several financial setbacks during all of this, but also we just let time get away from us! I can’t say how excited we are to being this close to done with the home study.
We have two appointments left with our social worker before she can draft up the home study. She’ll be coming to our home to do the quick home inspection on Monday, July 16th, and then we’ll have our individual interviews at the agency on Wednesday, July 18th. After that, we just have to wait for her to draft the actual home study document.
Once the home study is done, we can finish our dossier which is the paperwork we send to Russia. Our dossier is practically done as well, we just can’t send it in without the home study. Chris and I have a couple more hours of adoption training to complete online, and then it’s a matter of signing and notarizing all the documents. Then we send them to our agency, who forwards them to their coordinator in Russia, who then translates them all and tries to submit them to the Russia MOE (ministry of education). If the paperwork is accepted and approved, we should receive an invitation to come to Russia and meet our little girl!!!!!
Once our paperwork reaches Russia, things may get a little tricky. I’ve mentioned the tension that exists in Russia at the moment regarding international adoption, it’s just a matter of waiting to see how the situation plays out. Russia and the US sat down together last July and wrote up a new treaty regarding international adoption after some controversial cases regarding Russian children adopted to the US. The treaty was signed by both countries but it doesn’t take effect in Russia until it is ratified by the Russian Duma (parliament), which keeps getting postponed. The Duma’s last session was last Friday, July 6th. In this session, they postponed the ratification until this week. In the meantime, adoptions are processing really slowly at the moment. Please pray with us that Baby Sister’s region will continue accepting registrations from American families while this is all going on so that we can get to her and get her home soon!
So, that is where we are at at the moment. This is why our puzzle fundraiser is so important to us right now. In order to receive the final draft of our home study, we need to pay for our post-placement visits. Russia requires each adoptive family to submit four post-placement visits over the first few years that their adopted child comes home. Our agency charges $250 for each visit/report. There’s $1,000. In order to submit our dossier to our international agency, we need to pay our next installment of agency fees and foreign fees. That total is $2,500. So, we have at least $3,500 in adoption expenses coming up this month that we are working toward! If you feel led to do so, we would love your help getting our little girl home!
Please keep the prayers coming! We serve such an awesome God!
Love,
The Burrups
