Paperwork dance...

 Most of our dossier is officially done at the Chinese embassy and at our agency for review!
The one hold up has been Aaron's birth certificate. For whatever reason, the state of Oregon certified it wrong. *sigh* So it was sent back to Oregon and is now back in Washington D.C. going through the secretary of State (again) and the Chinese Embassy (again). But every day we are getting closer to bringing home our sweet boy! 

We are praying to have our dossier completely reviewed by our agency and submitted to China within 2 weeks. By all calculations I can find, this will likely give us a travel date of late summer.

Chinese embassy seal....so intricate!

We have been so relieved to have some contact with Z's orphanage and see updated pictures. The new information they sent us gave us updated measurements and he appears to have grown a lot since the last measurements! I am a little worried a few of the shirts I have bought him may be too small! They also sent us the sweetest video of him opening our first care package-he finally received this package 2 weeks ago-it was sent back in November!!

We continue to ask for your prayers for his safety and for our paperwork to go smoothly. We are getting much further in this process, but there are still several steps with immigration to get through before we can travel.  We also ask that you pray for Z specifically as he will likely have to be moved from the smaller orphanage and everything he knows, back to the much larger orphanage he was in as a tiny baby. While we know his basic needs will be met in this larger orphanage, it will not be his familiar caregivers or his familiar bed. It is likely they will not move him until just before we are able to travel to pick him up, but we know this will be another loss for him, and our hearts just hurt for him.

Thank you all for your continued support and prayers. We are continually amazed how smoothly this adoption process is going and how much we have learned about the love you all have for one sweet little boy who has a family waiting and loving him until we can hold him tight. Much Love, Aaron and Sarah

Adoption Auction

I am just now getting time to update you all on our auction. It. Was. Amazing. Out goal going into this auction was for people to have fun, celebrate Adoption, and break even cost wise-if we made a profit to go towards our adoption fund, we would feel blessed. If we didn't make a profit for our fund, we prayed someone else would show interest in adopting an orphan.

Let me tell you, this was beyond our dreams. It was fun, we saw friends from all aspects of our lives-work friends, our

kids school teachers, church friends and people were bidding on donated items, eating spaghetti, making necklaces, and having their pictures taken 

We had SUCH a fun night. And we had so many friends and family members helping us that we didn't even stay too late cleaning up!! 

The hot items of the night were probably the t-shirts and the chalkboard art. 

We are SO amazed and thankful for all of the help we received, for the generous supporters that came, for the donations given by people who couldn't attend, and for everyone showing love to our sweet boy. 

And... OUR GRAND TOTAL AMOUNT RAISED.... $3211!!!

I cannot even believe I am typing those numbers right now! 

My sister is working on more t-shirts and chalkboard art--so you will hear more about that soon if anyone wants to put in an order. In the meantime, we are feeling the love you all are sending and want to again say THANK YOU. The love being shown for our sweet boy leaves us speechless and teary. 

And...a few updated pictures!!!

Much love, Aaron and Sarah

How are we?

I feel like when we got the call about Z back in October, I had NO IDEA how we would make this work, how we could possibly afford to adopt when the cost was greater than my typical yearly paycheck? I have worked part time for years (on the days Aaron is home) to offset our living expenses, but how in the world would we double that AND have someone to take care of our kids? I should have known then, but I really didn't have to figure out anything. God has completely, undoubtedly taken care of these details and we are so beside ourselves.  We have both been able to pick up extra hours at work, our sweet Abby has helped out so much with her brother and sister when she needs to, our friends and family have picked up my kids from school. People have texted me on days when I needed it the most just to ask how we are doing and if we need anything. We have received random, unexpected donations in the mail, change jars that people from church and friends have filled and given to us, and paypal donations from friends around the country and even Canada! We have friends and family helping with our adoption auction and dinner this Saturday. Our boy has been loved by others since the day we first made all of this public. So, here we are again, so humbled and thankful.

There have no doubt been tears (lots), and long day of paperwork, and unexpected delays. There have been days I just didn't know if I could fill out another grant application. But, those long days are always tempered with the love our family and friends show us again and again.

So, thank you all. Thank you for showering us with love and joy. Thank you for supporting us when we are feeling the pressure, thank you for helping us see that it will all be worth it once our boy is home. Thank you for talking about him and knowing that he is a real boy, a helpless little three year old boy who does not have a family yet.

So, the next opportunity is our adoption fundraiser. Please consider coming if you live in Boise and let me know if possible how many in your party (so I can cook enough food!!).
For those who have asked about a way they can donate AND have it be tax deductible-we have chosen a new option (long story-the first option we chose had higher fees and a minimum donation amount and time frame). We have decided to use purecharity. This fundraiser is set up to go to our adoption agency, so we only wrote in the amount that would be paid directly to our agency. We will still have travel expenses and orphanage fees, etc but this would be another HUGE step into funding our adoption. https://www.purecharity.com/aaron-and-sarah-johnsons-adoption We have already had a very generous donation to this account and we are grateful beyond words

Here are a few pics of what is to come at the auction! We have had so many wonderful donations-it is going to be so much fun!

In other exciting news, we got an update last night and Z looks like he is being well taken care of until we can get him. We are so grateful for this. We will update more on this next time with new pictures of him as well!! Thank you all again so much.
Aaron and Sarah

What a week!!

This week has been one full of ups and downs. As you saw in my last post, our immigration approval arrived-which meant we could get our dossier mailed to the courier. The courier then takes this whole pile of paperwork to the State Department in Washington DC, then to the Chinese Embassy-also in Washington DC for the "sealing process."  The State Department verifies the prior certifications on our documents-basically they put their stamp on it saying we are not big liars or forgers. Then the Chinese embassy says "YES! ADOPT YOUR BOY!! (as soon as you jump through 4 more months of government hoops)"  Long story short-we had a major potential setback on Tuesday night after our agency emailed telling us there was a potential problem with an extra staple (yes, you read that right, a staple) on one of our documents. The Secretary of State here in Idaho had attached an extra page-which meant there were 2 staples when there should have been one and the letter they attached was not supposed to be attached to the exam form. Without going into long boring detail that only those of us in this weird adoption vortex love to chatter about-the potential problem turned out not to be a problem-but it was a harrowing 16 hours of waiting to figure out the problem on Wednesday morning. Moral of the story-extra staples are bad on government paperwork.

In exciting news, we should have our dossier back to us by late next week, (insert HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF) we then can review it (again), send it off to our agency and then it will be reviewed there, sent to China and translated! From the point it is logged in the Chinese system-we have what seems to be a 4 month wait of more paperwork and fund raising before we go bring our boy home to his family-to the home and people he has never known but who love him already.

We do need your help and support. Please spread the news to anyone you know about our adoption auction, please invite people and above all please pray that God will be used to open all of our eyes to see how very much we all have in this country and how much we can give-not just to our family and our specific adoption-but to all of the children out there who have never had a home, who don't know what it is to have stability, food every day, to be snuggled into bed at night.

Thank you all so much for your love and support-and see the sidebar! We have had more donations from our change jars that we deposited last week into our adoption account. As always, we are grateful and overwhelmed by your love and prayers.

Immigration Approval!!!

We received this beauty in the mail yesterday

 

 

This is the little teensy piece of paper that has been holding us up for the last few weeks and I am so excited to hold it in our hands! This is basically the US immigration department stating we can adopt a child from China. We still have a couple more immigration steps to go through- but this was a big one!!

 

Tomorrow, Aaron will take this document to the Secretary of State to have it certified and then Tuesday, after we say a little prayer, we will send our dossier to the courier where it will be taken to the US Secretary of State then the Chinese Embassy. It is a little freaky to mail off a huge pack of paperwork that has been consuming our every free moment and thought for the last 4 months, and trust that the courier and agencies will take care of it (and possibly hold it like a baby for me and sing it a little song) and get it back to us as soon as possible.

 

These steps are expected to take up to 4 weeks, then it will be sent to our agency for review, translated, then off to CHINA!!! We still have several months to go until we hold our sweet little man, but we are so VERY thankful for things progressing and for the prayers said by everyone for our sweet boy to be safe, to feel love, and to know we are coming for him.

 

We still have not gotten the update from the orphanage that was requested in January. We are so disappointed as we were hoping for some new pictures and an update on how our boy is doing. Unfortunately, our agency can only make the request--whether or not the orphanage accepts the request and gives more information is not in our control.

 

In the meantime, continue to pray for speedy processing of documents, continue to pray that we can meet our goals of completing this adoption with little debt, pray for our upcoming adoption auction (that's March 14 for all of my Boise peeps!), and continue to pray for peace as we go through the paperwork, applying for grants, and preparing to bring our sweet boy home who has never known a family.

 

Much Love to you all.