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.