What’s an apostille, you ask? I had no idea until about a week ago when I found out that every single document that we get notarized to send to Uganda has to be apostilled (authenticated) by the Secretary of State’s office. No biggie, right? WRONG. Our Ugandan attorney requires 6 copies of about 11-12 documents & the LA Sec. of State charges $10/document- so we are looking at between $700-800 just to authenticate that the notaries are legit! Seriously?! They think they’re being kind to us adoptive parents by not charging us the usual $20/document. Oh yeh, how giving.
Jay Dardenne’s office is getting a letter from the Matts really soon.
So our plan is to have a Texas notary do the paperwork… Texas has a $100 cap on apostilles- so even if we send them 80 documents, it will only cost $100 instead of $800. Pray that this plan works out so we can save $700 of unexpected expenses.
Also, our agency is changing attorneys, so the overall fees are going up about $2000-4000. We are still very well below what Ethiopia would have cost, but it’s always scary when that number rises. The attorney change is a very good thing- they are going to be using the most respected, admired adoption attorney in the country who serves on judicial panels and is a man of high esteem in the court system there. He is wonderful- and you get what you pay for- so we are totally ok with paying more, it just requires even more faith from us.
God can move a mountain, feed 5000 with a little bread and a couple fish, and raise people from the dead. I think He’s got this. 
Will you stand in faith with us that we will raise the rest of the necessary funds?
Wow! We are definitely praying that the TX thing works out for you guys! This is crazy. I don’t know if we’ll run into the same problem with Thailand (probably), but you guys can tell us how it works out! We pray for you guys and your children (all of them) daily!