You have a Referral - Now What?

Once you accept your referral, you have to make sure that all of your documents are pulled together. At the time we received Alex' referral (ok people - no one has helped me with the proper way to write Alex' or Alex's - come on - someone knows!!) we had our dossier done, but we hadn't received our I171-H yet. Amazingly it came just before we accepted our referral. We then had to sign a Power of Attorney that allows the attorney in Guatemala to process our adoption on our behalf. (and it had to be notarized, county clerk certified, secretary of state certified and Guatemalan consulate authenticated!)

At the same time, our entire dossier was sent to Guatemala where it had to get translated into Spanish. It takes a couple of weeks for the POA to get done and to Guat and to get the dossier translated.