Wednesday, February 24, 2010

New Friends

This morning I got to do the best thing ever. I got to go see a fully notarized and authenticated complete Rwandan dossier! I know, awesome, right! There is a small little group of us here in Austin that are adopting independently from Rwanda, and Emily won the dossier race. She was kind enough to invite everyone over to look at it before she sends it away to Washington and then to Kigali, never to be seen again. And not only that, she made lists of her table of contents for us to take home - a million thanks to her!
In this adoption journey, you need people to walk beside you. When we started, I'll be honest, I heard that advice and I despaired a bit. We have amazing friends, amazing friends who are adoptive parents, who are even currently in the process of adopting now, that share our heart for adoption and can relate to so many aspects of this journey. But its different when you have an agency walking next to you checking your p's and q's, making sure all your documents are in order, that all your i's are dotted and so on. Doing this independently is scary. Let me tell you how unbelievable it is to have this group of families seem to fall out of the sky and into our laps four months into our process. It is such a gift to have a group to turn to just to ask questions like "uh, did you include this statement in your dossier, and if so, did you get it authenticated or just notarized, etc..." Not to mention that the value of our kids being able to play together and share a common cultural background and appearance also can not be overstated. For now I am excited to have met a few of the women in this group, and I look forward to meeting the rest of the couples (there are six of us, including me and Jonathan). We have a no-kids-allowed dinner scheduled on March 6th so that we can all properly meet and get to know one another in person.
And I have finally decided on the home study. We are going to use Bonita, the independent social worker. I just feel like its going to be okay. So now I can move forward on getting the forms ready for that, and we can be on our way. Phew. Feels good to type that out loud.

5 comments:

  1. Yay!! I'm so glad you had a good morning!! That's great! Can't wait to hear all about it in person!

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  2. Woo Hoo! I could cut and paste your blog exactly...well except that I couldn't go this a.m. Yes, what would we do without Emily!! Also, so glad you're going to use Benita. You'll enjoy meeting her and knowing her relaxed but experienced nature. Sadly we didn't get our Home Study as promised today. Still waiting for our Abuse clearance...not that it's delayed for a good reason, it was just in the wrong pile...UGH.

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  3. Yea! I know that is a burden off your heart and mind for now to finally have peace about your decision. I'll keep praying.

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  4. Rachel,

    Christmas time just came and went and I realized I hadn't followed-up with you about getting together. We're still waiting for any news from Rwanda (DTR in late October).

    How is everything going for your family? Sounds like you have a good support group.

    Kayan

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  5. Hi! I need to know you. I was supposed to be there that day with you all- I was the one who kept calling while you were meeting! :) Can't wait to get together again- so fun we all have each other!

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