Adoption Update!

Hi Family and Friends! We hope this holiday season finds everyone doing well. Looking back, both Brian and I are very thankful we got through our busy time of paperwork before the holidays started. It has been nice to not have to worry about tracking things down here and there. We did get an update from Jackie, the head of the agency we are working with: International Children Foundation (ICF). She was the one we sent all of the paperwork to and she passed it on to Pierre, the lawyer in Burundi. We heard from Pierre that he has finished translated everything and he should be picking it up at the notary in Burundi today, and he will deliver it to the Central Authority on Monday. Once that happens, we will be eligible to be matched with a child. Of course, the wait time from there is very unknown. The Central Authority has to have a specific meeting to match waiting families with children, and we could go through multiple meetings without being matched. The regularity with which they meet is pretty up in the air as well. There is supposedly one coming up, and there was on back in the summer (June I believe). While we are anxious to be matched, we also believe that all will happen in God's perfect time! Our biggest fear is the transition of our new child into our already hectic family, so we believe that when God has all of our hearts and minds ready (especially Skylar, Emory, and Colton), we will be matched :)

We also just wanted to give an additional thank you to everyone who has donated to support our adoption. So far, we have raised almost $15,000 dollars. You have no idea what a blessing this is to us! The financial burden of international adoptions was our biggest hurdle to starting this process, and we trust that God will continue to bless our finances as we prepare to bring a new child into our family. Please know we couldn't do it with out your support, so thank you so much for being a part of our story.


If you are still interested in making a tax deductible donation, please check out our Adoption Fundraiser Page at www.adopttogether.org/baucherfamily

We will continue to post updates and share news as we have it! Thank you all again and Merry Christmas!!

The papers are in!

Since November is National Adoption Month, I wanted to make sure we updated you all where we are at in our process! We completed our application process with the USCIS and we received our approval letter a few weeks ago. From there, I was able to take ALL of our documents to the Secretary of State office downtown to get everything apostilled. For those of you not familiar with an apostille, it is basically an authentication of your notary. Pretty intense :) So every for that we had to have notarized, needed to be apostilled as well. It took me three trips to get everything taken care of, but after that, we were able to send our dossier packet off to our agency along with our second agency payment. Thank you so much to those of you who have supported us financially and helped us make that happen! We have been working primarily with Generations Adoption here in Austin to complete our homestudy and dossier package, and now that we have completed that step, we will transition into working mostly with Jackie, from the International Child Foundation (ICF) in Arizona. They are the ones who have been doing adoptions in Burundi and they have a lawyer, Pierre, on the ground in Burundi who helps with the whole process. Pierre is now translating our dossier into French and then he will submit it to the Central Authority of the Burundian Government. That should happen by the end of the month! Then we will be eligible to be matched with a child! That process could take any number of months, but we are definitely one step closer. Thank you all again for your support and prayers!

Much love,

Brian and Kristen

Noonday, fingerprinting, and other Burundians in Austin!

We hope this post finds everyone doing well! Yesterday we went up to Cedar Park (north side of Austin) to get fingerprinted by the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). The only kink in the trip was that we ended up bringing our five year old, Emory, because she had a fever the day before so we didn't send her to school. She was very worried she was going to have to get fingerprinted as well :) We were lucky to get through Austin traffic pretty quickly for our 8am appointment and we were the second people in line, so all in all it was a pretty painless process. We are one step closer to our USCIS application being approved, and that is the last thing we need to send our dossier package over to Burundi!

In the last few weeks, we have learned of several other families in the Austin area that are going through the process of adopting through Burundi. One family brought home twin 7 year olds about 6 months ago. We have been in email contact with them, and are looking forward to getting a chance to meet them and hear about their process. The mom, Liz, said the twins are adjusting really well and it's been a smooth process so far! Then last week, we had a chance to go out to dinner with another couple, Ashley and Ryan Beard, who live just a few miles from us and they are going to pick up their daughter tomorrow!! We are so excited for them as they started the process a long time ago! They started in Ethiopia and spent most of their time there, and then switched to Burundi. It has been really good to meet them and learn from them! Send prayers their way as they travel to Burundi this week to complete what has been a very trying process for their family! From connecting with Liz and the Beards on facebook, we were connected with another couple who is just a little bit ahead of us in the process. They're up in Steiner Ranch (about thirty minutes from us) and they just mailed their Dossier in last week! We have also been in touch with one more couple who goes to our church and is using the same agency and they're in the beginning of the process. So if all of these families end up with one child as opposed to a sibling group like Liz's family, we will have 6 kids from Burundi all right here in Austin. So cool!

The Beards were also nice enough to introduce us to a lady named Kerrin who is a noonday ambassador. I was not familiar at all with noonday, and so far I am really impressed with them as a company! Kerrin is having a "trunk show" in November and the woman hosting the show wanted to select an adoptive family to benefit from the proceeds of the trunk party. The Beards were going to be that family, but the graciously passed the benefit along to us since they're completing their adoption before the party! It is really nice because I don't have to host, invite guests, or anything...I just get to show up!! For those of you not familiar with Noonday, it is a company that basically gives a platform for third world artisans to sell their products. It is all fair trade and really nice! They sell items from Afghanistan, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Kenya, Napal, Peru, Uganda, and Vietnam. They have some really nice handmade jewelry, bags and other unique items. The link to the website that will benefit our adoption is:

bit.ly/AdoptionHelp

It is case sensitive just FYI. If you like fair trade items at all, check it out! You can order now through December 1 and the items ship when you order them (the company does not wait until the December deadline to ship things).

Thank you all for following us on this journey! We are so appreciative of all of your prayers and support!

Much love,

The Bauchers

Dossier Package

You guys are amazing! We are so lucky to have such supportive friends and family. We have already raised $3,000 in less than a month! Thank you to everyone who has been supporting us through prayer and financially.


We wanted to provide a short update, including our next steps. We currently have our I-800A application with the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services ("USCIS"). The I-800A is an application for the USCIS to determine if we are suitable to adopt a child from a Hague Convention country by ensuring that we meet all of the qualifications to adopt a child from Burundi. Once we receive the approval (hoping that this will be within the next 6-8 weeks), we need to have it and bunch of other documents certified by the state of Texas so that we can send in our Dossier package. Our Dossier package contains all of our documents (pretty much our life story) that we have been working on the last three months and is what is sent over to the Burundian government. All of the documents in this package need to be translated into French (and would be translated into English if they were originally in French) as Burundi uses both French and English as its national languages.


In order to cover agency fees and translation fees, we will need to submit a payment of $7,500 with the Dossier package. Our goal is that we can fund-raise enough to cover this payment as we have had quite a bit of cash outflow in these first couple months. So far, we have paid over $8,500 for agency fees, home study, psychological evaluation, I-800A application, finger printing, adoption education classes and other miscellaneous expenditures. We pray that you prayerfully consider supporting us financially. Anything that you can contribute will help. Please also share this with your friends or anyone else that you think would support us. Also, please note that though our fundraising site (https://www.adopttogether.org/baucherfamily), all donations are 100% tax-deductible. So please use this as an opportunity for your year-end tax planning :)


After the Dossier package and sent in and translated, we play the waiting game. The Central Authority is the government agency in Burundi that matches children up for adoption with adoptive parents, which is known as the referral process. There is no set schedule as to how often the Central Authority meets and how many children it refers as each meeting. This could take anywhere from 6 months up to over 2 years for them to refer us a child. We ask that you pray that this process will go smoothly for us and that we have patience through this process.

Home Study Complete!

Just a short update, our home study is now complete! We are waiting on our application to the USCIS, and then we will be able to send everything over to Burundi. This is the point where we will have little control over the process from here forward! We have worked hard to get together all of the paperwork and information needed to put together our dossier package, and once this is complete, the waiting game begins! Since our home study is complete, we were able to set up a fundraising page through a non-profit organization called AdoptTogether. Any donations made to AdoptTogether are tax deductible. We then apply for grants from AdoptTogether to reimburse us for the expenses of the adoption. As of now, we are anticipating the finals cost to be around $40,000. We are prayerfully budgeting in preparation for the upcoming expenses, and any donations you would like to make will be much appreciated. If you have any questions about the specific costs that are entailed, please do not hesitate to ask! The link for the fundraiser is www.adopttogether.org/baucherfamily Much love! Kristen and Brian

Some exciting news!

To Everyone who is reading this, thank you so much for your interest in this new step in our lives! Brian and I are exciting for the opportunity to begin this adoption journey and we look forward to keeping you up to date on the process. We will begin by telling you a little bit about how we came to this decision and where we are at in the process. Kristen has always had adoption on her heart, long before we started our family back in 2009! As things progressed with having our biological family, adoption took a back seat as we became slightly overwhelmed with the adjustment to having a new baby, then a toddler and a new baby, and then 3 children under 3.5! Lots of change and adventure in a pretty short period of time! To break that timeline down, we were married in November of 2008....363 days later we were blessed with our older daughter, Skylar Jane. 20 months after that our second daughter, Emory Margaret entered the world, and 21 months after that we had a son, Colton Christopher. Now, the kids are 6.5, 5, and 3. They definitely keep us busy, but we felt like we were at a point were we had a decent handle on our family and we could start to envision adding one more child to the crew! As soon as Brian gave the green light on learning more about adoption, Kristen had an agency and a country all picked out. That's a slight exaggeration, maybe :) We have been going to the Austin Stone Community Church for quite awhile (Brian since 2006 and Kristen since 2008) and adoption and caring for the orphan has always been something we have heard a lot about from the pastors at the Stone. Once we decided we wanted to look into this more, it seemed natural to start with the agencies affiliated with the Stone. We decided to go with Generations Adoption (headquartered in Waco, but they have an Austin office as well) and of the international programs the offer, Burundi, Africa seemed like the best fit! We knew we were not being called to adopt a new born, which is the only domestic option without going through the foster system. After researching both the foster to adopt option and international adoption, it seemed like international adoption was the best fit for our family. Burundi was the only African country that our agency has a history of working with, so that is how we came upon Burundi. So Generations is helping us prepare all of our documents and doing our home study, which is almost complete! They partner with the International Child Foundation (ICF) who is technically our primary agency. ICF is based in Arizona and they have been doing adoptions in Burundi for awhile now. They have a lawyer, Pierre, who is on staff and on the ground in Burundi to help with this whole process. Many families have gone through this process before so we have much confidence moving forward! In the next few months we will have our home study complete and will hopefully receive our I-800A Approval letter from USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). Once we receive those, we will send over our dossier package with all of the necessary documents to the Burundi Central Authority. Because Burundi is a Hague Country, all adoptions go through the Central Authority of the Government. This is a good thing because we know the children are protected from corrupt adoptions, but it can be slow! The Central Authority has committee meetings in which they match waiting families with available children (this is called a referral). The meetings do not happen on a regular basis, so we have no idea how long this process may take. There was much political unrest at the beginning of the year so the committee did not meet at all! The committee met again in June and we are hoping for more regular meetings coming up in the future, but there is no way to tell! Once you have a referral, you are matched with that child and we will travel to Burundi to meet him (that's right, him! We requested a boy!). From that point, we will come home and our son will remain in Burundi for 3-6 months while everything is legally finalized. Then we will return to Burundi to get our son, take him over to Kenya to finalize paperwork at the US Embassy, and then we will travel home! This process could take 1-3 weeks. So all in all, the referral could happen in the next few months or the next few years. We know the process can take quite some time which is why we are beginning it now. We want our adopted son to be close in age to our biological children so we figured if we start now, hopefully he will fall somewhere in the mix! We did request a 1-4 year old, so we shall see! Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we work through this process! We are so lucky to feel the support we have already felt and we will be sure to continue to add updates as we have them! Much love, Brian and Kristen