An Update!

We got an update from our agency yesterday evening that confirmed that our case entered PGN last week. PGN is the place where all of our documents and paperwork will be reviewed and, if everything is in order, a decree of adoption will be issued. So, in a nutshell, PGN approval makes us Israel's legal guardians! (For those of you keeping track of what's next...after PGN approval, we wait for the documents to be filed, we wait for a new birth certificate to be issued, Israel must get a new passport, and then the US Embassy will review all of the final documents and send us a date for our Visa appointment. That's when we finally, and ecstatically, will buy some airplane tickets!!)

We are praying very specifically that there will be no problems found in our paperwork and that we will have approval in record time. Something as simple as an expired notary seal or signatures that don't match exactly can mean that we have to re-do documents. It sounds simple enough, but every document that we submit has to have a notary seal, a verification of the notary from the county, an apostille from the Secretary of State's office, an authentication seal from the Guatemalan Consulate in Los Angeles, and translation. And it has to be sent to Guatemala via DHL. It's quite a process, and each level of verification, of course, has a fee.

So please, please, please pray that there are no problems!