SLOW SAILING AND PRAYER NEEDED

Everything is moving along, but very slowly. Our power of attorney is in Taiwan ready to be translated and our second addendum is ready to be reviewed by the children's home for approval. Nothing is happening this week because Taiwan is having a week long celebration of the Chinese New Year. It is tradition for all businesses to close down for the week of Chinese New Year. Hopefully things will start picking up next week. After the director of the children's home reviews and approves our home study addendum, we can get it notarized and e-mail it to him for translation. After everything is translated, they will mail all of the translated copies to us. We combine the tranlated copies with the English versions and get them certified and authenticated. We then mail the Chinese version and the English version of all of the papers back to Taiwan. They can then register for a court date for us to begin the court process of adopting Isaac.

Please pray for our financial situation. It seems that every time we turn around, something happens that is a large expense. It is preventing us from being able to save any money for the adoption, of which we still need at least another $4000. I have been having problems with my eyes, so I had to go to the eye doctor yesterday. I needed new glasses and because my eyes are so bad, I had to get specialty glasses which cost me $250. That was with vision insurance. It would have been twice that without insurance. I am also probably going to have to go to a specialist for my eyes. I have had double vision since I was 15 years old due to a car accident that damaged my right eye. I may need an outpatient procedure done to straighten my eye. I had this procedure done about 18 years ago, but it has worn off. It is an injection that holds my eye in place. My right eye is starting to turn toward my nose. The muscle that pulls my eye to the right was damaged and doesn't work, so without this injection to hold my eye in place, my eye pulls to the left into my nose. It is starting to make it very difficult for me to see because my eyes are crossing and blurring my vision. I have no idea how much that procedure will be. We are going to try to hold off on that until after we get Isaac home.

Please pray for us as these stressers of work and finances and health have really been getting us down. We know that God is in control and He is going to take care of us. Our human nature tends to forget that sometimes though, so we need prayers for strength. Please pray that God will start opening doors to provide us with the finances needs to bring Isaac home and to also take care of our medical needs.

UPDATE ON POA AND HOME STUDY SAGA

I thought I would update everyone on the power of attorney and home study saga. You may be saying, "I didn't know there was a saga with the power of attorney." Well, there was. It wasn't major. We just had to get it signed and notarized again today after we had done it and sent it off yesterday. On the power of attorney, there is a place for us to sign, for the notary to sign and place her stamp, and there are two lines for a witness to sign. I thought that there could be one witness and that the first line was for her to witness that Eddie signed and the next line was for her to witness that I signed. NO! I had to have two different witnesses, so we had to go back and do it again today. We are blessed though that a friend of mine at our local bank is a notary, so she was more than happy to do it for us. The other ladies at the bank were also very happy to act as witnesses. They they said they feel really special being a part of our adoption. Well, it was signed, notarized, witnessed, scanned, and e-mailed off again tonight. It is now ready to be translated.

Now to the home study saga. I e-mailed our social worker with the things that Taiwan wants in the next home study addendum. Hopefully she is working on that and I will have it soon. I asked her to please send me a draft before she gets it notarized so that I can e-mail it to Taiwan for review and approval to make sure that will satisfy what they are wanting. I am not sure how this is going to work with immigration. We have already received our first I600A approval notice and because of the last addendum, we have reqested our one free update. What I am not sure of is if this new addendum is going to cause a problem and if we are going to have to pay USCIS again. My thought is that we won't, but I am not sure. The information in the last addendum changed information that was approved and on our I600A approval. It was changed from being able to adopt a 0-2 year old child to a 0-4 year old child. That is a big issue when it comes to bringing our child home, so that definately affected our status with USCIS. This new home study addendum is address misspelled words in the original home study and in the home study addendum. This issue has nothing to do with an immigration issue. It is for Taiwan because of an apparent translation problem, so maybe we won't even have to do anything with USCIS. They will most likely be sent a copy of the new addendum so that they will have it, but it shouldn't have any bearing on our I600A approval. At least I don't think so. I have e-mailed my social worker asking her about that, but I haven't received a reply yet. We really can't afford to pay USCIS again, so please pray that we don't run into that problem. Also please pray that our social worker will have mercy on us and not charge us for this addendum. An addendum is $100 and we have already had to pay for one addendum. Hopefully, since this one was not our fault, they will have mercy and not charge us.

Please pray that we are able to save money faster. We are going to need about $5000 to $6000 more to bring Isaac home. We are having unexpected expenses pop up lately, so saving has been a challenge. Eddie is also VERY, VERY stressed at work. Please pray for peace for him.

POWER OF ATTORNEY SIGNED AND NOTARIZED!

We received our power of attorney through e-mail this morning. We got it signed, notarized, scanned, and e-mailed back to HOGL today. WHEW! All in one day! I am exhausted. Please continue to pray. We have one more little snag. They are concerned about a few misspelled words in the home study and want it corrected so they can translated. The problem is that the home study and home study addendum have both already been approved by the state and sent to USCIS. We already have our first approved I600A approval and we mailed our request yesterday for our one free update with our addendum. Today we find out about them wanting something done about the three misspelled words. Because it has already been approved by the state, another addendum will have to be done to address the misspellings. Our social worker said that she has never had a request for an addendum due to misspelled words for translation purposes. She said that no other country has made an issue of it before, but she is doing the addendum. I can understand them wanting this in a way. I know that they just want to make sure that there are no questions with translation. I have never worked with Taiwan before, so I am not sure how strick they are about this or if it could cause a problem. I would hate to get to court and it cause a snag in the adoption. I really wish that the problem would go away though so that we wouldn't have to do another addendum. Please pray that our social worker and her boss have mercy on us and don't charge us for this update since it really wasn't us asking for it. Also please pray that we can get it to USCIS before they issue or second I600A approval. If not, we will have to pay them again.

UPDATED PHOTO OF ISAAC!

They just sent us an updated photo of Isaac. It seems that he likes to ride a tricycle. That is good, because that is what we were planning on getting him for his birthday. We probably won't get him home by his birthday, but there will be another birthday/welcome home celebration waiting on him when he gets home.

They have all of our home study now, including the addendum. Now we are waiting on our power of attorney so that we can get it signed and notarized. After our home study and power of attorney is translated, they will mail it back to us and we will have everything notarized, certified and authenticated. Then we send it back to Taiwan and they can register for a court date. They say it could take up to 6 weeks to get a court date. It could be one to two month after that before we travel to bring him home.

Please pray that everything will go quickly and smoothly. We are so excited about bringing him home as soon as possible.

HOME STUDY ADDENDUM IS FINALLY HERE!

WHEW! After over two weeks of trying to get our home study addendum done and in our hands, it finally arrived this morning at 9 a.m. through UPS. It had been supposedly mailed last Monday through USPS but it never arrived. I arranged to have another set of notarized addendumed picked up by UPS and delivered to me on Saturday. Well, come the end of the day on Saturday, it still hadn't arrived. I was emotionally shot. It finally arrived this morning and I learned that the reason it wasn't delivered on Saturday is because the receptionist at our home study agency didn't check the box for Saturday delivery. The important thing now is that it is here. Eddie is scanning it at work into a PDF file and we will be e-mailing it tonight to HOGL. I haven't heard anything from them in about two weeks. Please pray that we hear something from them soon. I am hoping that the hold up with getting our power of attorney is that they are waiting on our home study addendum. Please pray that we get our POA this week so that we can get it signed and notarized.

ADDENDUM STILL NOT HERE! ARGH!

Well, it has been over a week since our home study addendum was completed by the social worker but we still don't have it in our hands. It was mailed on Monday but it has apparently gotten lost in the mail. It may still come in the mail tomorrow, but I don't know that for sure, so I contacted our social worker and arranged for us to pay for UPS to pick up another set of notarized documents. I scheduled for Next Day Air so that I will receive it by noon tomorrow. I really want to make sure that the children's home in Taiwan has it by Monday morning their time, which will be Sunday night our time. It just seems to be one glitch or hickup after another. I know there are a lot of hurdles to jump over before our son is in our arms, but we seem to be tripping over every hurdle we come to. Please pray for smooth sailing for us from this point on. I feel like I am walking on thin ice that can break through at any moment.

HOME STUDY ADDENDUM IS DONE!

I got an e-mail today from our social worker saying that she finished our home study addendum. YAHOO!!!! I don't have it in my hands yet, but I hope to have it in the mail by Monday. As soon as we get it, we send a scanned copy of it on to Home of God's Love so that they can get our home study translated. God has really been working in our adoption of Isaac. I know that God's plan and timing is so perfect. I am such a worrier by nature and it is really hard for me sometimes to just wait and trust that God is going to work everything out. He is really teaching me some valuable lessons with this adoption. Thanks everyone for praying for us and please continue to keep us in your prayers through our journey to Isaac.

FINALLY TALKED TO THE SOCIAL WORKER

Well, after almost two weeks of trying to locate our social worker, I finally got an e-mail from her today. She said she would start working on the addendum to our homestudy with the adjusted age range so that USCIS will let us bring Isaac home. WOHOO! PRAISE GOD!

ISAAC'S NAME...(CONTINUED)

Eddie and I talked about it and decided to name him Isaac Wei-Jywun Henley. Eddie feels very strongly about keeping part of his given name. We did that with Olivia also. Her middle name is ChunLan, which means spring orchid in Chinese Mandarin. We don't have the Chinese characters yet for Isaac's given name, so we don't know the exact meaning of his given name of Wei-Jywun, but we should know something pretty soon.

OUR SON'S NEW NAME

Things are finally going along pretty smoothly. We sent a scanned copy of our approved homestudy to Home of God's Love and we hope to have an addendum with the approved age adjustment soon. I still haven't been able to talk to our social worker yet. She is still out of town. They said she would be back today, but she was delayed. I will try her again in the morning.

They are asking for our choice for our son's new name so that they can get him use to it. They also need it so they can get started writing the Power of Attorney. We have definately decided to call him Isaac, but we are torn about a middle name. We are considering part or all of his given name, which is Wei-Jywun. We kept Olivia's given name as her middle name so we are strongly considering that for Isaac. We aren't sure of it's meaning yet though.