Shawn and I met with our social worker last night to go over all of our dossier documents. She told us that we did a really good job and she felt like it was ready to be sent on to the main office for the official review!! (I was a little disappointed that it took us as long as it did to finish everything up (7 weeks exactly), but everyone assures me this is a really fast amount of time to get done. Oh well, maybe next time I can get it down to 4 weeks!)That meant a quick trip to FedEx this morning to make 4 copies (a whole lotta paper!!) and then put them all in a really big box to send them off. Once the main office finishes the review (takes about 1 week), they will let us know if anything needs to be changed and give us a chance to fix any problems. It will then be sent off to Colombia for translation (usually takes 2-4 weeks).
It is at this point that we might be put in a holding pattern as we are also waiting for the pre-approval from the US Citizenship and Immigration Office
to adopt a child and bring them to the United States. Until we have this approval, our dossier and application can't be sent to the orphanage in Colombia that we are adopting from. We are really hoping that everything gets done about the same time, though, so we don't have any downtime and can get right on the next waiting list. We are ready to truly start preparing for the arrival of our child.
Shawn and I spent July 3-7 on a mission trip to the suburbs of New York City helping out with a church trying to get rooted in the community. We went with a team of 7 from our church and had a great time getting to know the others and helping the church make a difference in the small communities they are trying to impact. We started out by going to 3 different July 4th festivals giving out water bottles and sunscreen (a grand total of 1200 contacts that day!). On Saturday, we were supposed to do a gas giveaway at a local gas station. Totally foreign to us, though, was all the rules and regulations regarding gas in New Jersey, not the least of which is that it is illegal to pump your own gas. 
After about an hour of trying to find a way to do our event and still follow the rules, we ended up calling it a day and we all headed to NYC to be tourists for the afternoon. Shawn and I kept busy at The Bodies...a really cool exhibition showing dissected human bodies, as well as trips to Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and just people-watching in the city. Our ride back on the New Jersey Transit was very interesting...it involved a slightly "off" older man and a drunk couple. I thought there were going to be punches thrown...but fortunately they all calmed down before it came to that. Sunday we spent the morning prayer-walking around the different communities and then helped set up/participated in church that evening. One cool thing...a woman that received a water bottle and information about the church on July 4th ended up visiting on Sunday night with her 4 kids! It was great to see some of the fruit of our labor. Monday we got up at the crack of dawn and handed out 800 breakfast bars to commuters at the train stations. Then, to make up for the gas giveaway problems...we got $1250 in gas cards ($25 increments) and gave them out in a local grocery store parking lo
t. It was very neat to see the reactions of people when they believed us that there were really getting $25 in free gas and didn't have to do a thing to get it!! We had a great time and would go back to help the church again if the opportunity presents itself. While it sometimes seems intimidating to sign up for mission trips, it is always a blessing and a way to really grow and mature in your faith.
