Remaining Steps In Our Adoption of Samuel

1. Final court date for Samuel, his mother, and Kofi in Ghana scheduled for this coming Tuesday (1/26/10).
   
2. Finalized Ghana court documents should be in Kofi’s hands approximately 1 month after the court date.
   
3. Once we have finalized court documents in hand we will file the I-600 form (Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative) with the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS).
   
4. Wait on USCIS approval of I-600 form (wait time is usually 2-3 months).
   
5. Meanwhile, as our power of attorney, Kofi will secure Samuel’s passport as well as required visa medical.
   
6. Kofi will then attend the visa exit interview (in our behalf) with the U.S. Embassy and Samuel.
   
7. Once the visa exit interview has been completed and once we have approval of the I-600 form we then will be set to travel.
   
8. Once in Ghana we will then obtain Samuel’s visa by filing two more forms (DS-230: Application for Immigrant Visa & Alien Registration and the I-864: Affidavit of Support) with the Embassy in Ghana. Estimated time for visa approval is less than a week. Total trip time approximately 7 days or less.
   
9. Bring Samuel home. Let’s party!

So according to this schedule we have about 3-4 months left in our adoption of Samuel. I have been praying that our travel dates would be at the end of March or early April. In order for that to happen all of these steps would really have to stay right on track, and some of them would even need to happen earlier than expected. :) Please pray for our adoption, that paperwork would be processed timely, that the court date scheduled for Tuesday would not need to be postponed for any reason, and that God would time our Ghana travel dates so that they fit well with Jake's work schedule. Many of you know that the month of April is when Jake gets his highschool teams back and we start traveling all over the place for tournaments (I like to call it April Madness). It would be awesome if Samuel could be home with us by this point! :) Thanks for your prayers! We have seen so many ways in which God has answered them!