It has been five weeks since we returned from Bulgaria. Waiting to go back and get Abigail is very, very difficult. We miss her so much. Fortunately we have a good online community of others adopting from Bulgaria to keep us in the know for expected timing of each step of the way.
On April 12th, our I-800 application was provisionally approved. On April 20th, the Bureau of Consular Affairs sent a notification letter to us that they sent the I-800 approval to the U.S. Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria. So now we wait for the approval from Bulgaria. From what we have been able to ascertain, this is how the process should go from here:
The U.S. Embassy notifies our adoption agency (Vesta) representatives in Bulgaria that they have received the I-800 approval notification.
Vesta takes to the Embassy (by scheduled appointment) the DS-230 Application for Immigrant Visa completed form (http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/81807.pdf) and payment. Once the Embassy approves the DS-230 form, we get something called an Article 5 Letter. If you would like to know what that looks like, here is an example: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/105116.pdf
After the Article 5 Issuance, our paperwork goes to the Bulgaria Minister of Justice for signature. Then our agency is notified of that, and Vesta then gets a court date scheduled for our file.
We do not attend the court date. If all goes smoothly, on the court date we will be the official parents of Abigail. Then, there could be up to another wait (after being officially her parents!) for notification of second trip to go pick her up. This is because of paperwork necessary to get her back into the United States as a citizen (Visa, passport, adoption paperwork, etc) from what I understand.
Please be praying that all this goes very swiftly in spite of lots of holidays for Bulgarians in May and May 12th election of new government officials. May God speed our paperwork through. We miss Abigail so much!
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