Update

Hello all!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones!  I want to spend every day being thankful for all that God has blessed me with.  Believe me, it's way more than I deserve.

I just want to update everyone on where we are at right now.  In my last post, I shared the awesome news of our being able to pay the first agency fee of $2500 through an amazingly generous donation.  Now that we have payed that fee, our agency has made the whole dossier preparation process available to us.  I received a 46 page PDF file detailing every piece of paperwork required, how to obtain them, and then how to get them notarized, then certified, and finally, authenticated.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this process, it's absolutely crazy!  Worth it in every way, but crazy. 

Today, Jon and I will go to our main post office and apply for our passports.  I am so thankful that even after paying our $2500 fee, we have the money to do this as well.  It costs $135 plus the cost of photos for each of us to get a passport. 

We are also in the process of our homestudy.  We had the first visit with our social worker on the 27th and it went pretty well.  It was slightly frustrating because we spent the better part of two days cleaning our house from top to bottom, and our SW only ended up sitting in our living room.  Oh well, it felt good to have the house sparkling clean even if it only lasted a short while.

Here is what our next several steps will look like financially:

*Homestudy completion: $800
*Compiling the dossier: $450
*2nd and 3rd agency fees: $2350 and $1950
*Finger printing and USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) filing: $85/ea for fingerprints and $720 total for the filing.
*CCCWA ( China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption ) fee: $775 when our dossier is submitted to China.

That is a total of roughly $7215 and most of it must be paid before we can apply for any grants.

We have been so incredibly blessed by your generosity so far, and it has brought me to tears many times.  What I'd like to ask for today is prayer.  I have absolutely no reason to doubt God.  He has provided at every step of this process, yet I find myself letting little doubts creep up and overwhelm me.  Please pray that I would trust in God, who is mightier than deadlines and fees.  Pray that I would take one step at a time and allow God to work in that step instead of trying to see the whole picture.  I won't lie, this process it HARD.  I've found myself marveling a lot at the people who do this multiple times.  I know Asher is worth it though and so I keep moving forward.

Thank you for your prayers and for your generous giving.  God bless you all!

~Carly