Our dossier is off!

Our dossier is finally finished! We received back all of our certifications on Thursday, made copies of everything (which took about an hour) and sent the whole things off today. This is what happens next:

Before America World can submit a family’s dossier to the Ethiopian government’s Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, it must be sent through a careful process of certification and authentication in order for it to be used as a legal framework for adoption. Certification and authentication is a three-step procedure in which dossier documents visit their respective Secretaries of State, the U.S. Department of State, and Ethiopia’s Embassy in Washington, D.C. Family Coordinators will assist families through this process as well. The authentication process concludes the paper chase, and America World delivers the finished dossier to the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs. Once the dossier is in Ethiopia, it is translated, processed and examined by the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs. Our staff works with government officials and orphanages as a match is made between prospective parents and a child. Prospective parents typically wait 3-7 months before receiving a referral of a child from Ethiopia.

We don't really doing anything else, except pray and wait and go on about our life (like Chris working on his last paper and his thesis). Our agency does most everything else, until we receive a referral.