So much has happened these past few days in trying to finish up all the non time sensative documents that we need to have completed for our second dossier! I feel like I would be writing a book if I shared all of the hangups that were then answered by prayer. But, that is in part why I started this blog- to journal all of the amazing miracles that God does along the journey- so, here it goes!
I must have made at least 3 extra trips over to our notary- thank God she is so kind, because I would notice a mistake, or have the wrong date...and she was a saint through it all!
While all these trips to our notary were happening, I was double checking our paperwork to make sure all the notary dates matched the dates on the documents, and found that our letter from the NJ State Board of Medical Examiners was not notorized...it was just sealed with their NJME seal! Knowing Greg was going on Wednesday (and this all happened on Tuesday) to get our documents apostilled in Trenton, I had to get them to send me a new letter that was notorized. After going back and forth on the phone with this department, and going from "we don't even have a notary on our floor, in our department" to asking our agency if an astentation sheet was acceptable to Russia. After a long day back and forth on the phone, the kind lady at the Medical Board of Examiners' office said she personally printed out the letters we needed, and ran them down to another floor in her building and found someone who could notorize them for us! WHO HOO! The next step was seeing if I could get to those letters by the next day (this was about 5 o'clock that we finally had the letters we needed notorized). We found out that the building the ME office is in, is not too far away from the department of NJ who apostilles. So, yesterday, Greg just drove to the ME office first, picked up those letters, and then went to have everything apostilled.
Last night, it felt so good to know the documents were out of our hands, and being taken care of (with only a little concern that they would be done incorrectly...that did happen to us on our first dossier, and we had to drive up to Trenton again to re-do a document)...little did we know last night what we'd be in for this morning...
Fast forward to this morning at about 7:15. I awake to "Liz, where's the number to the apostille office?" Me: "In my phone, why?" Greg: "The guy checked off to have everything certified, not apostilled! I must have told him like 6 times 'apostille!' " (NOT exactly my favorite way to jump start my morning...I'd rather leave it to the caffeine..rather than a good scare!) So, we called the office about every 5 minutes, until we finally got ahold of someone- and got transferred to this nice lady who calmly said, "oh, I think I apostilled your documents yesterday." To which I replied, "Apostilled? Did you see that they were incorrectly checked off to be certified?" And, she said, "Yes, I did, but I saw 'Russia' on it, and knew they needed to be apostilled." THANK YOU LORD! It took everything within me to hold back the tears of relief! I had visions of me having to re-do those 32 documents! She also told me she put them in the Fed Ex drop yesterday, and we should be getting them today.
Lo and behold- as I am typing this now- I got the FedEx delivery- and I stopped my typing, and checked everything- ALL CORRECT! I feel so so relieved!
So, the only documents we have left to be done for our second dossier is our Medicals (need to be within 3 months of court date), FBI Clearance forms (should be getting those in the next few weeks), and another "updated" copy of our NJ Criminal Clearance forms- they also must be dated within 3 months of our court date.
So, those of you who are in this process might be thinking- wow, you don't even have a referral yet! How do you have all this done? And, I would answer, "Miraculously" Since we know we are assigned to the Moscow region, we can do the Moscow specific Dossier #2, and there are only a few time sensative documents, so I figured I would take the time I have off this summer, and get as much of it done as I can. Our agency said we can hand carry over our second dossier if/when it is done on our first trip- and that will expedite the wait time between trips. Since we are expecting the wait between our trips (after we meet and spend a week with our child) to be much more difficult than this initial wait is, we thought it would be best to get on it as fast as we could...hoping that it will pay off later.
Well, I think this is enough blogging for one day- whew! Time to start the day! As you can see, we could really use your continued prayers! You never know what each day is going to bring!
Just in case you are wondering just how many documents we are talking about...and how many hours of hard work....here's a picture!
