On December 26, 2015, I finally got to travel to Uganda with
the Living Wellsprings of Life Mission Team (thanks to a very generous
couple)! I met Shakirah for the first
time. She is just as sweet as I imagined
and it was a blessing to finally meet her.
While there, I met with the probate officer in Mbale to introduce myself
and check in on the status of our case.
As I said in my previous post, we have had to backtrack on some of the
steps in the process. But we did find
someone to act as our Hague-Accredited Primary Service Provider here in the
United States. He is an attorney in New
York, and only one of three attorneys in the U.S. that can act as a PSP. A
helpful lady at an adoption agency in Waco referred us to him since we could
not find an adoption agency willing to take our case and work with Uganda. So, we are now gathering documents and
preparing to have our home study re-done.
After our home study is completed, our attorney in Uganda can then
submit our file to the probate officer, who will in turn complete her
investigation and then it will be presented in the Ugandan Court. Also, once our home study is completed, we
can re-apply with U.S. Immigration as the first step in getting permission to
bring Shakirah into the United States after the Ugandan Court approves the
adoption.
So please just continue your prayers for Shakirah and this
entire process! We still have several
puzzle pieces left from our “puzzle fundraiser”, so if you would like to make a
tax-deductible donation and get your name on a puzzle piece, you can click on
this link:
All of the money that has been donated so far helped pay for
me to go to Uganda and meet with Shakirah and the probate officer, half of the
fees for our Ugandan attorney, fees for our original attorney that we were
working with here in the U.S., travel expenses for Jason to go to Uganda last
summer to meet with attorney and probate officer, and several other
miscellaneous things that come up that we had no idea about until we started
this process (filing fees with immigration, cost of online adoption training
classes, fingerprinting, passport/birth certificate for Shakirah, etc…I don’t
have my list in front of me). The next
round of fundraising is going to be for our updated home study, retainer for
our Primary Service Provider/attorney in New York, and the rest of what we owe
the attorney in Uganda.
Thank you and love y’all!
God Bless!!!
