Dossier passed first review

Our family coordinator emailed us today to say that our dossier looks fine - WHEW!! I can't even explain how relieving that is. If they are able to get it to the U.S. Embassy to be sealed (which they plan to) it will be mailed out to Ethiopia on Friday. Here's to hoping!

I'm quite happy our main 'wait' time will be during the summer because summer always flies by. We are already looking at our summer schedule and gripping our chairs for the whirlwind tour of our summer lives. Between conferences that Joseph is going on, visits that I'm making, weddings, and family reunions, we only have a few weekends to sit around thinking about waiting for our baby. Fall, and hopefully, a referral will be here before we know it!

Dossier on its way!!!

We received a wonderful surprise yesterday and got our I-171H in the mail. So, this morning I drove up to Indy and got all our dossier documents certified. It was quite painless really and I was only in the office about 15 minutes. I enjoyed the beautiful early morning mist, treated myself to some Starbucks, and listened to the Wailin' Jennys. Then I came back and did all the copying and checking of documents. An inch (over 2 pounds) of paperwork is on its way to our agency and should be there tomorrow morning!!

Next, our agency will look over the dossier documents, making sure everything is flawless and complete. Then they will have it authenticated/certified by the United States somebody or other before sending it off to Ethiopia!

After that we are officially 'waiting.' Right now our agency is predicting a 5-9 month wait for a referral (when they send you a picture and files on a baby). Then we'll travel 1-2 months after that. We're hoping and praying for a Christmas baby, but we'll see what happens. I think we are joining over 60 families waiting for a referral.

When I returned from FedEx, I flipped over my day calendar on my desk and the verse for today was "Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans and widows in their troubles and refuse to let the world corrupt us." James 1:27 It was just confirmation that God does ordain such small things as the day our dossier gets mailed.

Praise God!!

Authentication part 1

We've both got life insurance!! We signed the policies today. This means we have everything EXCEPT the I-171H, which we're filing a nice complaint about with all the powers that be, trying to make Indiana do a bit better job.

We're sending all our other documents up to Indianapolis to be authenticated (the stamp that approves the notary's stamp). Hopefully that will all go off just fine with no corrections needing to made (quite a frequent occurrence). Then we just wait for our I-171H. When we get it, we'll just need to get that authenticated and our dossier will be on its way to AWA for approval!!

We can see the end of paperwork. It's been a long seven months, but we're about to officially be 'waiting.'

Garage (Warehouse) Sale Pictures

When we say 'garage sale', even 'huge garage sale', we're doubtful you're thinking huge enough unless you actually saw the gymnasium, so we're giving you some proof of just HOW huge this thing was!


Raffling off my mother's quilt has already made hundreds of dollars. Next week we'll find out who the lucky winner is! You can still buy tickets!!

Barbara Lehr made these awesome purses/Bible bags and prayer journals from old wool sweaters. They were a bit too nice to sell at the garage sale, but we'll try at another time - maybe a silent auction. If you'd like to purchase one, let me know. She will also do custom orders, even if you're out of town. They are absolutely beautiful.

Part one of the tables. Old computer monitors anyone?

See all those clothes back there? Thanks to all who sorted through those!

Steve Moxey really wanted the ab chair down there in the middle, but alas, it was marked a wee bit high. Now he'll never have that six-pack.

We had a steady stream of people through the building both days. It was a great way for the community to get introduced to our church and find out that square building is actually a church!

Life Insurance Part 1

Joseph's life insurance policy came today, so we're one paper closer to being done. We are hoping mine will come tomorrow. Once we have both in hand we can get them approved by our agency and get everything certified.

Then, we still wait for our final I-171H to come in, which our representative is looking into. Please pray that this comes this week. It would be a HUGE deal to get done with paper work and officially start 'waiting.'

Newsletter

Many of you have received our newsletter in the mail, but we also wanted to make it available here for you to download. Please feel free to pass it on to others also.

Here is the link to download the pdf.

Adoption_Newsletter.pdf

God is Good

Thanks to all of you who have sent donations to us or to our church's adoption fund! Though we don't have all of it in hand yet, we expect that between the garage sale and your donations we have jumped quite suddenly to over $13,000 raised. This is more than we could ever have hoped for in one week. Thank you all, and praise be to the Lord, for His lovingkindness endures forever.

Garage Sales Rock

Our mega garage sale went much better than I ever dreamed possible! At the end of a long week, we had made over $5,000! Praise God!!

Our garage sale was more of a warehouse sale, with over 40 tables of stuff (pictures coming soon) and a number of items that went for over $100. Thank you to our church family at Church of the Good Shepherd for their generous donations of time, money and belongings. A few awards to the following:

Lawrence and Janet Howell take the cake for contributing the most items. It took a box truck to bring their goods to the church!

Julia Tucker definitely gets the team spirit award. Even though she was in Chicago on the actual days of the sale, she and Jenna Killingsworth gave out hand-made invitations (from their work's recycle bin) to all their co-workers. She not only convinced her co-workers to come to the sale, but to donate some pretty amazing stuff too. Then she did all the math of how much money we could earn by selling pop, hot dogs, and water and brought them all to the sale.

Kyla Curell gets the MVP award for sheer man-hours put in. After helping make signs, pricing for days, and sorting through 5 tables and 3 rods full of clothes, she was also dreaming about garage sales. She was even there before me on the first day! True to being Mike Boles' daughter, she was also a stickler on bargaining. Apparently Kyla and Mike had a show-down on the price of an impact wrench, which I would have loved to see. But either way - Kudos to Kyla!! You rock!!

Isaac Curell earns the best baby prize for contentedly letting his mother work.

Eleanor Rice gets the award for best saleswoman (stories coming soon).

My mother claims the "I travelled the farthest for the sale" award. North of Martinsville doesn't hold a candle to central Wisconsin!

All of the Bayly clan get the "Hey! That's mine! You can't sell that!"or the "This is being un-donated" award.

Jon Crum receives a medal for bravery in the face of great danger, risking life and limb and the favor of his boss while delivering the left-over items to an auction house in Salsbury, Indiana.

Glen Pierson gets the sign-picker-upper award. Between putting up the large road signs and bringing them back to the church both days, together with going out and picking them up every 10 minutes when they blew over, it's no wonder that when he brought them back for the final time he said "I hope I never see those signs again!"

Each of you were a tremendous help and we couldn't have done it without you. Thanks for a great, great garage sale weekend!

Quilt Raffle

As part of our massive garage sale weekend, we are raffling off this quilt. My mother made it and quilted herself. She does an awesome job and if it weren't counter productive, I would buy this one myself. The quilt is 86" x 74" and would also make an amazing gift! Raffle tickets are $5 a piece and we'll be drawing the name next week.

How you can have a chance for this quilt for $5:

Bloomington locals - bring your $5 to the church office, garage sale, or Sunday service, writing your name and phone number on a 3x5 card to be entered into the drawing.

Out of towners - post a comment, saying you'd like to be entered in and mail a check payable to "Heidi Bayly" and a 3x5 card with your full name and phone number on it to: Heidi Bayly 949 S. Persimmon Tree Cr. Bloomington, IN 47403

Donations (Good news and a correction)

We have been approved to receive assistance with our adoption through our church’s Adoption Fund. If you would like to make a tax-deductible financial contribution to our adoption expenses, mail your donation to Church of the Good Shepherd, 2501 S. Endwright Rd. Bloomington, Indiana 47403. Checks should be made out to ‘Church of the Good Shepherd’ and in the memo line ‘Adoption Fund’.

This is in distinction to the newsletter we sent out which also had our last name in the memo field. If you do put our last name in the memo line, the gift will not be tax deductible. (The IRS tax code hard at work.) I'm sorry for any confusion this may have caused.