State Approval! Sending in our I600A!

Hi there friends. I'm just posting to announce that we have received at long last our DCFS (Dept of Children and Family Services) or State of IL approval of our homestudy. This means that we can send it in with our I-600A form to the IL branch of CIS (Immigration), along with our $830 check to Homeland Security. In turn, they will send us a date when we will need to run up to Naperville, IL, to get our fingerprints done. Then we'll just wait for their approval. Once we have that- a form called the I-171H- we'll be ready to send in our big fat dossier of documents to Ethiopia via America World. AW will make sure it's all good-to-go and translated appropriately.

Then, the REAL wait will begin...the wait for a referral. On average, this is taking 9-11 months right now, but it can be less for sibling groups...or more. But, one thing at a time. Thanks for praying with us in this. Pray that God would just intervene to have his way in all of it. He knows our kids already, and he holds them in his hands. It's funny, our caseworker told me this morning that there was a mistake in our state approval letter that they sent her, so they were resending it. Apparently there are FIVE Rice families adopting right now in the state of IL, and one of those is adopting from Ethiopia like us. We had gotten their letter. Oops. Glad she saw that. Ok, more later.

We're off to free bowling now with the Whites. Just came from Miller Park new ginormous playground and spray park. Sylvia ran into Angelo, classmate and friend from Pepper Ridge. Ok, bye!