Paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork

posted by Cheri on Sat. May 6, 2006
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We are slowly making progress on our paperwork collection. You wouldn't believe the number of steps that each official document must go through. For example, when we ordered a certified marriage license it arrived with a seal from the county. We then sent our county-certified marriage license to the Secretary of State to receive a state seal. Once it arrives, we'll send our marriage license, with its county seal AND its state seal, to the Guatemalan embassy to receive an embassy authentication seal. When that comes back, we send it, with its first three seals, to be translated into Spanish and re-authenticated in Guatemala -- FOUR seals of certification/authentication for one little marriage license!

And it's not just the marriage license, all official documents - birth certificates, police & FBI clearance letters, witness statements, medical letters, etc. - all require four seals of certification. Strangely, the only documents that don't require the four seals are our letters of reference (different than witness statements) and our guardianship letter. We really wouldn't mind getting four seals if we could get them all in one place, at one time. Instead we have to mail them off to an official, wait a couple weeks for them to be returned, then mail them to the next official for the next seal, wait a couple more weeks, and so on. As you can guess, we're doing a lot of waiting. Each day when the postal carrier comes I eagerly flip through the junk mail hoping to see one of our return envelopes.  

We did get a nice surprise on Friday. We thought our State police clearance letters would take another two weeks to arrive, but they came yesterday -- yea! Now we can send our first stack of documents to the home study social worker so that she can start writing her report. She has to see the original documents before writing her report, but fortunately she doesn't have to wait on all the authentication seals. Keep your fingers crossed that she'll finish her report quickly. Of course, once she's finished, her report still has to go through the four levels of certification - but it should be the last document going through the process. Ah, what a relief that will be!

I keep thinking that it will be nice when the paper-chase is over and everything is being processed in Guatemala... but then I realize that at least now I have something to do, even if it's just checking the mail and sending off request letters. Once the dossier is finished and sent off, then we really will be just waiting. Well, I guess that's when I can start preparing the baby's room. That will definately be the best part of the waiting period!