Puzzle Update

46 pieces sponsored....54 pieces still available! Thank you to all who have sponsored puzzle pieces so far. We appreciate your support!  The puzzle is taking shape and looking great.... we can't wait to see the finished product.

New parents....just like that!



Alison signing the acceptance letter

 On Wednesday morning, November 3, we signed and sent in our referral acceptance for two cutie-patootie young boys! And just like that....we are new parents! A family of EIGHT! How amazing is that? God gave us a special little treat the next day as we left the hotel where we were staying for hubby's work conference. Our shuttle bus driver was a very friendly man from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia! We got to share our good news with him, get his insights about his country, and learn how to pronounce our older son's name! :o) It is a bit awkward to have a son whose name you can't pronounce! So, with that blessing, we hopped on the shuttle bus, hopped on the plane, and eventually made it home to our wonderful kids last night. When we got home we were greeted with another blessing - we found that some dear friends had been to our house to decorate and place balloons, congratulation signs, and a bag of boy gifts on our front patio! What a fun homecoming. We are blessed, and we rejoice today as a family.




We modeled some of these boy toys and decided a new era in the Grant life had begun- toys of this nature have never before been seen in our home!

We loved this sign from some dear friends...



A fun surprise- our friends had decorated our fence and front porch to celebrate our referral acceptance!



God is good!

 

Puzzle Fundraiser

Are you able to donate $5.00 to our adoption? Then you can take part in  our very fun fundraiser! We have purchased this 100 piece puzzle, "An African Afternoon," and we are "selling" puzzle pieces for $5.00 each. For every $5 you are able to donate, we will write your name on the back of the puzzle piece and begin assembling the puzzle. As soon as the 100 pieces are sold, we will glue the puzzle together and be able to frame it and hang it in our new kids' room and have a beautiful, permanent record of some of the people who helped bring our new children home from Ethiopia. We will take pictures and post them with the progress along the way. Would you consider sponsoring one or more puzzle pieces in order to raise the final funds we need to finance our adoption? Thank you for your support and encouragement!
Email: grantfamilyfarm@frontiernet.net

We received a referral today!

What an amazingly exciting day! We would like to request prayer from all of you as we consider the referral we just received for a young sibling set! Please pray for wisdom as we look through their files and make this big decision!

Mom and Dad had just left to go shopping  when the phone rang  - it was our America World social worker. She said she would call Mom and Dad on their cell phones, which left the four of us girls at home, waiting in excruciating turmoil and curiosity while we waited to see if the call had been our referral! Lucky for us it was only about four minutes before Mom and Dad came screeching back into our driveway with the big news that the call had been for our referral! We all screamed and rejoiced and screamed some more, and then poured over the email pictures and information.

Please continue to pray for us as we make this big decision! More to come soon....




Jumping for joy!!! This was Ashlyn's reaction to the exciting news- we were lucky to have our camera handy!

Samuel, another little boy from Ethiopia, was very excited to see the picture of the younger sibling, and promptly said "Boy-boy, friend!" and kissed the picture! How cute is that?!



Greetings from the Grants! We have finally started a blog, which is, in itself, a miracle, due to our complete lack of technical abilities. :o) We would like to share our adoption process with you, so follow along for the highlights!

The official adoption process began February 19, 2010, after almost two years of prayer, by submitting a preliminary online application to America World. After this was accepted, we filled out a much more in-depth application and were accepted into the Ethiopia program. The first step would be to contact Bethany Christian Services to initiate a Home Study; the study is a thorough evaluation of our home and family, and the finished product comprises an extensive portion of the America World application. 

After the final visit with our Bethany social worker in Roseville, we enjoyed getting our first taste of Ethiopian food at the Queen Sheba Restaurant in Sacramento.


The Grants at the Queen Sheba Restaurant in Sacramento



After completing fingerprinting, background checks, police checks, and all the rest, plus waiting several weeks for our social worker to complete her portion of the paperwork, we received our completed home study! Behold, there was much rejoicing throughout the land of the Grants!
 

Scott and Alison in front of the INS building where we received
our finger printing.











 







Officially State Certified!




















After our application was processed by immigration, we received an appointment to complete the INS fingerprinting in Sacramento. While in Sacramento, we also took two forms to the Secretary of State's office to be state certified.

The final "piece" of the application puzzle is the all-important I-171H. When you finally receive that form, you are able to submit your entire dossier to America World and then get on the waiting list. The wait for this form varies from state to state, but our "golden ticket" arrived in only seven days. We placed this piece of paper in our dossier and we all drove to the nearest Fed-Ex office to mail the package to America World in Virginia.



We mailed in our completed dossier on August 26th, 2010



After two staff checks by America World, our dossier was forward to the Ethiopian Embassy and then on to Ethiopia itself. Our family tracked our dossier as it flew out from Virginia on September 3, 2010, and went to Paris, France; to Dubai; and finally landed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 

And now...the waiting game has begun! Our wait may be anywhere from several weeks to a year, with a "best guess" of about six months. We are trusting God to match us up with just the right children at just the right time. While we wait we will be re-arranging bedrooms, painting, and trying to raise the necessary funds to be ready to accept a referral and travel to Ethiopia was soon as we get our call.