It's Offical.

Received this email this morning and Scott and I are on cloud 9.

Hi Scott & Katie,

I hope you are doing well today! I wanted to email you to confirm receipt of your initial agreement paperwork and payment. Now that I’ve received your paperwork, your family will be assigned a Family Coordinator to work with you through the remainder of your process. You should hear from your Family Coordinator within the next week or so regarding the next steps. If you have any questions in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

It has been a pleasure to assist your family through the process thus far and I wish you the best in your adoption journey! I pray that the Lord will guide and strengthen you through your process.

In Him,


Amy Pearson
Intake/Post Placement Coordinator

Then later this afternoon we got this letter.

Dear Scott & Kathleen,

Hello and welcome to the Ethiopia Program at America World! I am looking forward to working with your family during the exciting journey of adoption! As your family coordinator, I will assist you in completing the comprehensive paperwork required to adopt a child from Ethiopia.

To begin your paper-chase process, please read through the information listed below and begin completing the following steps:

· Read through the Dossier Guidelines and sign the Dossier Guidelines Agreement
· Review other attachments
· Return the Dossier Guidelines Agreement and Family Service Plan to me through regular mail BY 12/03/2009. **Please put “ATTENTION: CAITLIN EDWARDS” on the envelope.**
· As you gather documents for your dossier make sure you send them to me by fax or email. This is mandatory so I can review them to make sure they meet Ethiopia’s requirements.
· Please note that the expected timeframe to complete a dossier is 4-6 months.

In order to assist your family in various ways throughout your adoption process, I wanted to make you aware of the following resources:

· We have an America World blog and will use this as our primary vehicle for communicating general information to you about programs, events, referrals, etc. Please sign up for the blog by going to www.awaablog.com. Please refer to it for the most up to date information from America World.

· You will receive Weekly Encouragements with paperwork tips and bible verses throughout your adoption.

· We have yahoo chat groups available for you to give and receive support from fellow adoptive parents.
ð AWAA’s Chat Group: www.yahoogroups.com. You can subscribe by going to our web page and looking under "links”.

· As your Family Coordinator, It is always my desire and commitment to respond to your voicemails and emails as quickly as possible. In order to continue to serve families to the best of my ability and manage work load, I will continue to respond to families questions and concerns though prioritizing families by stage of adoption and then by the order in which inquires are received. Due to time sensitive deadlines during referral processing, my response time will be focused on assisting families to accept their referrals,

I am delighted to begin this journey with your family. There will be blessings and challenges along the way; however, I trust our feet will always have the Light to walk in as Christ is the leader of this voyage. I am praying for your family as they begin this exciting stage.

Joyfully,


Caitlin Edwards
Africa Family Coordinator

I'm excited to get started but the 16 attachments made my heart race.

1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Philippians 4:13
For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

Please pray for us as we do our best to gather and organize and notarize every imaginable piece of paper. It's so worth it. In the end, a child that had no mom and dad will have one. A child with no wonderful sister will have one and a child without 2 crazy brothers will have a forever family. We fully love this little person already without ever laying eyes on him/her. It's hard to explain. Please pray for us.