Sponsor Kilometers

We are VERY excited about bringing our little girl home, hopefully in the next year to year and a half. Aside from the paperwork and bureaucracy, the main obstacle we face is funds. International adoption is very expensive. We are hoping to raise about half the money we still need through fundraising. Interestingly enough this dollar amount is approximately the same number as the number of kilometers between Ethiopia’s capital and Victoria (about 9400). If we can raise one dollar for each kilometer between us and our daughter, we will be able to bring her home! A PayPal account has been set up for people to contribute various amounts. If you feel inspired to take part and contribute, we would be eternally grateful. Well, perhaps for one hundred years. Make that fifty. How about we link the years of gratefulness to how much you contribute? Leah says that I can't link how long we'll be grateful to how much you contribute, so we'll just be very grateful for a very long time. We are also going to look into what the Ethiopian orphanages need, specfically from the area we are adopting from (TBD). We'll keep you posted as we find out more. Hopefully we'll be able to meet some of these needs as well.

Where we are so far...

Jeremy and I set out to begin the adoption process in February of this year. We have just completed the "home study" phase. Which means that we have essentially been checked out by a social worker and have been given the stamp of approval (wheh, good thing sinse we are already parents :)). The homestudy consists of a series of meetings with a provincially approved social worker who comes, checks out your home and basically asks you a series of semi invasive questions to determine if you are a good candidate to be an adoptive parent. For us, it actually didn't go that badly. It was surprisingly straight forward. CAFAC (the adoption agency in Manitoba), requires that we complete an adoption education component. They sent us a 3 inch binder full of reading and homework. Between all the regular stuff we do (kids, work etc), this basically took 2 intensive weeks to finish. The next step is dossier preparation. This is basically a paper chase. We have to gather a whole bunch of documents together (birth certificates, criminal record checks, pictures etc) that have to be packaged together and sent off to Ethiopia. I have most of what we need but we are waiting on Alberta to send us birth certificates. That basically sums up how far we have come so far. If it sounds like a lot of work that's because it is! In the end though it will be worth it. As far as finances are concerned, we are trying to pick up little extra jobs as much and are trying to save as much as we can. For instance this week, we have been filling in at our church while our janitor is on holidays. We are also starting to consider different fundraising ideas... so if you have any let me know!