For many years, Chad and I have dreamed about the idea of international adoption.
Coming to Rwanda, we wondered if it might become part of our story. Near the beginning of 2016, we actually started the process. Since Rwanda is closed to international adoption, we set our sights on Burundi, our neighboring country with a similar language and the same people groups. We found a Hague-approved agency in the States that could work with us overseas and had our home study done by a gentleman from Germany.
Our next big step was approval from the U.S. We set about the some-what mysterious process of getting our local police clearance. After many trips throughout our neighborhood and city, we finally received police clearance. We sent our clearance, U.S. background checks and fingerprints with our application back to the US. Near the beginning of 2017, we were approved by the United States government to become adoptive parents.
The next step? Approval from the Burundian government. For the past few months, we've been gathering our dossier, the set of documents that Burundi requires from us. After much requesting, ordering, waiting, mailing, signing, notarizing, and authenticating... our dossier is now complete and on its way to our agency in Arizona!
What a relief.
From there it will be translated to French and then sent back here to Burundi. Once we are approved by the Burundian government, the referral process begins. Burundi will look for children that seem to match us and that legitimately need a family. We are asking for a sibling set, 5 years old or younger. Please pray that God will actually do the matching.
The adoption process is complicated anywhere, but maybe especially in Burundi, with instability in the government. Please pray with us that the process will move along and that we will receive a referral sometime this summer. It seems like a big hope, but not impossible.
