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I just had a good conversation with Jessica, the Case Manager for AFOD, our agency. She walked me through the next 2 months of our process. This is what I understand is going to happen. Our dossier will arrive at our attorney's office in Guatemala TODAY. It will take them 2 weeks to translate the documents and then our Power of Attorney will be filed (known as being Registered) in the Guatemala Family Court. The Family Court will assign a Social Worker to the case who will take 1-1 1/2 months to conduct birth mother and foster mother and child interviews and will then prepare and present a report to the attorney. Naturally there are fast SW's and slow SW's....we'll hope for good luck. When the SW report is complete, the U.S. Embassy receive our dossier and will initiate the DNA testing. Jessica will not apparently receive updates until they are requested to pay for the DNA testing. The DNA testing is done in the presence of our attorney, the foster Mom, Franklin and his birth mother. Mouth swabs are taken and the test is sent to a lab in the U.S. We will be notified via email, directly from the U.S. Embassy (who is notified by the lab) but the written report will not be received from the lab until 3 weeks after the test is taken. Jessica will only hear if there is a problem (ususally in the first week). Once the formal results are received by Jessica, and then the U.S. Embassy, the Embassy will issue "Pre-approval" which essentially means that the U.S. has conducted it's 1st review and pre-approval to bring Franklin into the U.S. We will be able to visit Franklin once this DNA test is done and we are confident that there is a match. We are still hoping that this will allow us to go visit by February 1st which is 11 weeks from today!
Once we have received "pre-approval" from the U.S. Embassy (Jessica is notified of this), our case will enter P.G.N. within one or two days. Then we wait for what will certainly be at least one "kick-out" for some reason (probably to re-do some paperwork). We will be in PGN for at least 4 weeks but more likely 6-8 weeks. I've seen some people stuck in for almost 3 months...
That will get painful. After we are OUT of PGN, we wait for the U.S. Embassy to issue what is know as the "Pink" Slip and then the embassy appointment is scheduled. At this point we are days/weeks away from going to bring Franklin home. I need to get more detail on this last part....
I'm still really really hoping that Franklin could be home in May but I think that would mean that we would have to be out of PGN by early April. We'll see.
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