Red Tape

"Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do." I Thessalonians 5:11

Now that we've identified the children we are going to adopt, there is paperwork. Endless reams of seemingly pointless official stuff! All sorts of documents to verify we are who we say. That's actually not uncalled for, but every single document has to be officially verified by state authorities! It sure is handy to live in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina - we don't have to involve the Postal Service.

This process wasn't really difficult, per se, but it took time and coordination. That really tried our patience, and it was easy to become frustrated with people who didn't seem to be jumping right to what we wanted! Obviously, we understand people's circumstances, and that the world doesn't revolve around us! Really, we are very thankful for how helpful everybody's been to us: writing letters, checking our paperwork, notarizing the documents, and generally good advice from those who've done it before.

Here's how the process goes:

1. We had to collect all sorts of documents, ie. birth certificates, marriage license, letters of employment, and letters of reference.
2. Each of these documents had to be notarized.
3. Each of these documents then had to have its notary certified by the state. (We had to deal with NH, NC, and SC)
4.  Next we have to send this whole pack of paper (it's called "The Dossier") to a Guatemalan Consulate to be approved.
5. Then it comes back to us, and we send a complete copy the agency, and one for Guatemala.
6. The last paperwork to be completed (but has to be started as early as possible because it takes three months for us) is the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) paperwork.

Throughout this whole period, Krista and Georgia (with our agency) frequently checked on each other Okay, OK, enough of the boring stuff - we get to see our children!

End of 1999

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