Thursday, October 28, 2010

A long journey to The Blue Nile

Wow, so much has happened the last two weeks in the Rogers’ household. God has moved MOUNTAINS and we feel so incredibly blessed. As you may know we have been waiting for the i171H form. This form is a very important piece of paper stating that our son can be an American Citizen. Josh and I had been checking the mail each day hoping that it was the day. On Thursday, October 21, 2010 Josh was set to get back from a business trip and I had a 4th grade concert to attend. We got home after a very long day and open a “government” type looking envelope. We stared at the paper and had NO idea what it was! We were stumped. The next day we asked a few people if this might be our i171H form. They laughed and told us to look at the VERY tiny numbers on the bottom right hand corner of the paper. Sure enough, just what we had been waiting for! The i171H form had arrived. We had a good laugh about the fact that we had been waiting anxiously only to not even recognize the very “plain” looking form when it came in the mail.

The next step on our list was to get our documents county and state certified. Josh handled the county certification quickly without too much trouble. The state certification meant a trip to Columbus, Ohio to see the Secretary of the State. We decided to make a fun trip out of it with our friends, the Garmans. We packed snacks, movies, and our children in the vans and headed out. When we arrived, Dan and Josh went in to the get the documents state certified. The guys were seriously done within 15 minutes! Our documents were officially State certified. WAHOO!!

We then had dinner reservations at an authentic Ethiopian restaurant on High Street in Columbus called “The Blue Nile.” We were also very excited because my brother, his wife, and their adorable son were able to join us! It is difficult to explain Ethiopian food. First of all, they do not use silverware. They use a no yeast flat bread called Injera to scoop up the food. Josh and I had experienced this on our visit to Kenya in 2007, but Injera is MUCH tastier than Ugali. My dish consisted of beef tips and peppers and was spicy, which I loved. The boys shared a combo of 2 lamb dishes, a lentil dish, and a chicken dish. Josh gave them very high praises as well. The spices in the food were amazing. Our experience at “The Blue Nile” was wonderful and the people were very kind. We thanked them several times for their generosity considering we had 5 kids under the age of 4! Which by the way the kids also enjoyed the food! We left with full stomachs and smiling faces.

What is next for us in the adoption process you might ask? Lord willing we can get our Dossier sent out bright and early tomorrow morning to AWAA. They will have 2 staff members review each document carefully to make sure we are not missing anything. Once this is done they will mail (they only mail on Fridays) the dossier to Ethiopia and give us a tracking number. We will officially be DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) at that point and will then be assigned a “waiting number” and we will begin the next waiting phase.

I absolutely must mention that NONE of this could have happened without YOU. We cannot thank you enough for the donations, volunteer work, t-shirts bought, pampered chef items bought, etc that have provided us with the funds to be able to send in our dossier. God has provided in AMAZING ways and we are very very very grateful.

Lastly, even though getting our papers state certified today did not seem like a huge event, in all reality it was a giant step in being able to bring our son home. Josh and I were reminded today that the things that we do in our lives that seem like little insignificant tasks may very well be having a very huge impact in someone else’s life.

3 comments:

the clemensuz said...

Wonderful news!!! We are so excited for you guys. Praying for you all every step of the way!

Staci and Damon said...

Great news!! Then the difficult part begins...the waiting!

jkseevers said...

Awesome news, Tami! We are super pumped for you guys and are eagerly awaiting for our I171H to arrive at our door... hopefully any day now:)
Super excited that your dossier will be sent tomorrow! YIPEE! ET, here we come!
Katie