Citizenship part one !!!

Well it has been a while since I've posted anything. Sorry about that, there had really been nothing notable happening here on the adoption front to tell you about. Also, there was a few weeks we were without Internet. But now we are back online, and there are a few new things happening! 
A while back (I think March) we applied for citizenship for our child or children (we applied for two children thinking we might get two girls). When you apply for citizenship you have to do it in two parts. First you have to prove you are Canadian. You do this by getting all your important documents notarized by a notary public, then sending them off with a payment.  Normally it takes 27 weeks to get Part 1 approved.  So we were thinking that we would hear from the government sometime at the end of August or even September.  Well, last week we got our Part 1 approval in the mail!!!  Very exciting for us to get it so quickly!  It is one less thing we have to wait for.  
Now we are waiting for our letter of approval from the government of Ontario saying we are "fit to be parents".  That piece of paper we are thinking will come in about 8 weeks, so by the end of August maybe a bit sooner.  And after that, we can officially start looking.  That doesn't mean we will be travelling any time soon though.  Most likely we will be making lots of phone calls with our agency, trying to figure out the best time for us to go to Guyana, waiting until we know there may be children available to be adopted.  
But, it's nice to have another step in the process complete :)  
I am going to add this letter to my ever growing file folder, which is, believe it or not, neatly organized.  If you know me at all, being organized has not always been a strong trait of mine!!  But I think that being a naturally disorganized person has actually been a good thing for me in the long run.  I tend to get a bit anxious about my weakness (worried I may lose something or misplace an important document) and that leads me to over-compensate. So I actually end up being super organized, in a forced, obsessive kind of way.  My file folder is probably the most organized thing I've ever put together.  There are triple photocopies of every document and everything is labeled with a label maker which makes it look neat and tidy :)  It makes me feel less chaotic about everything when I see everything on my end is in order! 

Citizenship

When you adopt a baby/child from another country, you have to apply for Canadian Citizenship for that child. (For the most part anyway, some countries want you to get immigration first, but that is a whole other thing). Guyana requires you to get citizenship. It's a 2 step process. Step 1, we have to prove that we are Canadian citizens eligible to apply for citizenship on behalf of our child. So that seems easy enough right? Just show the Canadian government a copy of my Canadian passport issued by them after I already proved I was a Canadian citizen. HA! Not quite. First I had to fill out PART 1 Form, photocopy mine and Derek's birth certificates, driver's licence, passports, and marriage licence. (PS not the old marriage licence the new one issued by the government a few years ago and you have to apply for that one too which takes about a month or two to come in....thanks for the heads up about that Sue...having that ready was a real bonus!) So then, with my photocopies and original documents in hand I went to the lawyers office (lol, 4 kids in tow because I was anxious to send it out yesterday and they could only meet with me at lunch!) to get each copy notarized by a notary public, with a seal and letter with each one. Then all the documents go in the envelope along with a receipt that you paid already online or at a bank. (You didn't think this was going to be free did you?!?) Whew. Anyway, the whole Part one is now done. And that is really about all I got done yesterday. But now my citizenship Part 1 is on it's way to Nova Scotia!!! Only 27 weeks and I will get them back.....

Guyana!!!

So, after much prayer and lots of discussion and research, we've narrowed our list of countries down to ONE :)

Guyana (pronounced gy-AN-ə), previously known as British Guiana, is on the northern coast of South America. Guyana has been a former colony of the British, Dutch, French and for 200 years the Spanish. Guyana is one of the few Caribbean countries which are not islands and

the population of Guyana is approximately 770,000. About 90% of people living there live on the coast(approximately 10% of the total land area of Guyana). The rest of the country is thick jungle, with little or no roads going into the interior.

The population of Guyana is made up of groups with ethnic backgrounds from India, Africa, Europe, China, with Aboriginal. These groups of diverse nationality backgrounds have a common language, English and Creole.

Some of the biggest problems the Guyanese people are facing are poor health care (with many people dying from AIDS, malaria, and because of bad drinking water...intestinal problems), also poverty is a huge issue.

The reason why we chose Guyana is pretty simple. We had narrowed down our choices to a few countries. Due to the fact that we already have 4 children, a lot of the countries wouldn't look twice at us. We were seriously considering Ethiopia as an option, but in the last few weeks the program for Ethiopia closed. We were also approved to go to South Africa, but the wait list is quite high and they prefer young childless couples. So, the choice left was Guyana and we are very excited about it!! We are happy that God laid out a clear choice for us because we were very uncertain which direction to take!

So, now we wait again. We haven't officially signed any papers, but we have to wait until the homestudy is done to make the next real move. Until then, we will be filing for citizenship or immigration, doing more research, making connections.