We have BIG news!
We are pursuing international adoption from South Africa!
We are hopeful and working hard to prepare to welcome a new member into our family. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption-related costs can easily total up to $40,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $30,000 to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents. Although this is a huge goal, we appreciate gifts of any size - $30 will cover the cost of ordering a document, and $100 will pay for one of our trainings. This is also a lengthy process - we could be waiting for a year or more before we travel to meet our new child (or children!), so if you can't give right now, check back later!
We also covet prayers during this time. Please see updates below, or reach out to us directly to join our prayer team.
We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around our child as he/she grows up. Thank you!
Hello all, we received our approval from US Immigration a few weeks ago! Praise God! We then had to get it notarized and then sent off to the WA Secretary of State to get apostilled before we can send our dossier to South Africa. It is, however, the very last item we have to get prior to that, so here we are waiting with baited breath for the apostilled USCIS approval letter to come back. ASAP we will be sending our dossier to SA, and then we wait to hear back from them at least 3 months.
Please pray for us as we continue to wait. It has been a long, hard road. We've paid a lot of money into this already, and we are now just getting to the waiting to get matched part.
Thank you for your support so far,
Brad for the Hixsons.
Hello all. Our Home Study has been officially approved and we have sent off our application to the USCIS (US Immigration) for approval from the Gov for adoption. Yay! Now we have roughly 75 days to wait.
While waiting we will get our last few items for submission to the South Africa Immigration for approval from them, we will continue to raise money and we have 8 2nd level courses we need to complete.
We have also received a few private donations (but I can't seem to update the amount to show a total running donations amount).
So I will post from time to time adding in the additional private donations.
Total Donations: ~$4,300
Well, the website did an overhaul and updated a lot of stuff, making it way easier for us to post and manage our site. It also means it blew away all of our previous posts.
Update on where we are and the next steps (painting with broad strokes here):
-Homestudy is almost complete (2-3 weeks)
-Once HS is complete, we submit to the US Immigration for approval (4-6 weeks)
-After USCIS approval, we submit to South Africa for approval (4-6 weeks)
-Waiting for SA to pair us with a kid/kiddos
-While waiting we will complete our second set of adoption courses
Update on my health:
-1st brain surgery on Sept. 4th - success
-2nd brain surgery on April 7th - success
-4 weeks post op and doing sooo much better this time around. It's like the world renown neurosurgeons @UW who do this exact surgery about once a week know what they're doing!
-On short-term disability while off work.
-Praising God every day for bringing us through this with such a supportive family, church, work and insurance!
-Brad for the Hixsons
