Baby Steps

We wish we had breaking news....but we continue to just keep plugging along. We were so excited to recieve our Notarized Home Studies in the mail yesterday, but as we reviewed them, we found a couple of errors. So - now we need those to be fixed and must wait again. Hopefully, they will be corrected this week and by the end of the week we can send in everything needed to the United States Center for Immigration Services (USCIS). We are learning to take it all with a grain of salt, because when we think something is going to happen, it doesn't.....but that doesn't mean we are learning this lesson very quickly or patiently. :-)

As we move along in the process, we find it very easy to start worrying about the time table of all this......at this point it looks like we will still need to make two trips to Ethiopia and we start to "what if" those trips.....what if we are gone over one of the kids birthdays? what if the timing is difficult with our jobs? what if we don't have the funds for the tickets? what if Vicki has a panic attack on the plane? (did you know Vicki has a HUGE fear of flying?) what if we don't have our immunizations done when we get "the call"? And we can get so caught in this pattern of wondering about all these possibilities....but, we have to remember how we came to this decision in the first place.....God has called us to do this and He has called us to TRUST HIM. And, on a daily basis we will continue to do just that.

Please continue to keep the "Jansen Expansion" in your prayers.....for freedom from worries, for our child waiting to come home and for our family to be prepared for all the changes ahead. Please pray especially for a particular paper we need for our Dossier that has been difficult to get so far...we'd love for this piece of paper to be completed this week!

Thanks for your continued support in so many ways - we remain grateful!

The latest...

We've had a few adoption happenings this week - nothing major, but still worth rejoicing about. We recieved word from our Ohio Social Worker that our Ohio Child Abuse Clearances finally come back and so she has been able to send our Home Study on to her supervisor for final approval - we are thrilled and can't wait to have the Home Study here soon!

Once we recieve the Home Study, we can continue our USCIS paperwork, as well as our Ethiopian Dossier. The USCIS is where the U.S. Government clears us for our adoption, and the Ethiopian Dosser is what gets sent to their government to start the process in country there. These are both HUGE parts of this adoption journey

Having the Home Study also means that we can start applying for grants for the adoption costs - which we are eager to do, as we are still quite in need of funding.

If you haven't bought coffee yet - would you consider buying a bag a month until our process is complete? We know that $5.00 a bag doesn't sound like much, but if only 20 of you did that for the next 6 months - that would help us raise $600!! Every bag of coffee helps!


Here are a few prayer requests:

*For our Child in Ethiopia to be kept safe - physically & emotionally, comfortable and well fed, and that their heart & soul is already starting to be prepared for life as a Jansen :-)
*For the continual paperwork process to go smoothly
*For the present Jansen's to be in the process of preparation for the new member of the family
*For continued funding of this adoption

As always - we are grateful that you just spent a couple of minutes reading this - we thank you!