The Bring Ooley Home Sale we had last week went great! We raised just over $1,500 in just a couple days!! Thank you SO much to everyone who was involved, whether bringing items, buying items, or spreading the word! You each played a role and we are so grateful for your help and support. The remaining items from the sale were taken by a non-profit that takes the items and recycles them in another form or donates them to those in need. This non-profit will weigh the remaining items and pay us per pound of what is there, so that amount of $1,500 will be more once that is done.
We're looking at needing close to $12,000 additional funds needed to complete the process. Fees pop up here and there as well, and it all adds up. We've been approved for our first grant and received $2,000 and are currently in the application process of another one as well!
The sale was Friday and Saturday...then on Monday we got our official approval to adopt! Our letter from the USCIS shows that we are allowed to adopt up to 3 children up to 18 years old and we are approved for special needs should we ever feel that calling! Pretty exciting stuff!!! So what's next? Well, we're trying to figure that out ourselves actually. With this last piece to the puzzle, our documents will be complete on the U.S. side and will move into the hands of Haiti. Once they've pushed the documents through a few offices, we (or prob just Daniel) will be flying to Haiti to apply for Ooley's Visa. After that, the next step would be arranging to bring him home.
How long will all this take? Pretty cool story about that! A couple weeks ago, we got an email telling us that from this point we were looking at 24 months for Haiti to process. We know that is unecceptable and have been believing for our son to be home around Christmas. The adoption agency has been telling us that is a lofty goal and that they've never closed an adoption in less than a year. A week after that email saying 24 months, and us saying absolutely not, we got another email. This one told us that our agency has been talking with some others who are working Haitian adoptions as well and they are saying things are moving very quickly. They estimated the time from where we are now to be 4-6 months!
How do you explain the jump from 24 months to 4-6 months? GOD! And if you do the math, that is Christmas time! They are saying it's still too premature to say if an adoption can be closed in less than a year, but we are believing that ours will be their first! Please continue to believe with us!
We'll keep you posted! Love you all!
