I haven't updated for awhile, so I thought I would let everyone know that we have officially started our adoption journey! We submitted our adoption application on August 12, 2010 (and resubmitted it on September 5 - no one's fault, all part of God's perfect timing!), and around the second week of October we were giving the okay to start our homestudy. After making a few calls (and sending out several emails to various agencies), I got a very exciting phone call on October 21! Until then, I really didn't know who we were going to go through and that was something I was worrying about. In the back of my mind was always the question, would the agency know what the country needed - would we get it finalized, only to find out that something was wrong and it would take longer or cost more? We needed to find an agency (or lawyer) that would do the homestudy in Kansas (I will save that for another blog post), which was also posing a problem. So, I began searching online. I found a few that were licensed in Kansas, but either they'd never dealt with Taiwan before, or they could do the homestudy part just not the dossier, or still others that would cost us a LOT more than what I was thinking (a large part of that was due to either paying for their travel expenses or our own). For those of you not familiar with homestudies, they can be costly. So, it was a HUGE answer to prayer when I found out that a man who has done several others for this orphanage would be able to do ours (I was told by a few families that he was no longer doing them for new families; he works as a prosecuting attorney full time and he just does these on the side when he can)! I should also mention he was about $500 cheaper than others I had found. Plus, it would (should) only take around 3-4 weeks to complete! I was sooo thankful for this!
Well, on November 6, 2010 we had the first part of our homestudy done (the biggest part of it). :) It went really well and he didn't think there would be any problems. It also didn't take as long as I thought it would and the guy was super nice and so easy to talk to! (Another fear I had been dealing with - for the most part, a homestudy is an interview with you and your spouse and could take up to about 4 hours, and for those of you that know us, neither Adam nor I are very talkative people, especially when we don't know the person.) But he made it really easy and was very laid back through the whole thing. You could say, he was almost a God-send. :)
So now the waiting begins. The rough draft should be done in the next week, and if there are no changes to it then it will be finalized. As soon as it is done, it will be submitted to the orphanage. We will also submit our I-600A paperwork at the same time. I'm super excited that we are even this close! It seems like it has taken forever to get to this place, but we're here and we are that much closer to bringing our little girl home! It was around this time last year that I felt like God was directing us to adopt (and we finally told our families in December, 2009). Maybe by this time next year, we will have our little girl. :)
We could really use your prayers in the months to come! Pray for all the financing to come through, for safety as we will be doing some traveling (for fingerprinting and then ultimately flying to pick our daughter up), for God's hand to be in everything and that it all would go smoothly and come together in His timing, and finally strength for us during this time of waiting. Please also pray for other families who are in the process of adopting. I've come across several blogs and Facebook pages in the last few months of families going through the same thing. It's a tough road to travel, but it's worth it all in the end! Also pray for all the children out there waiting for their forever families! There are 146 million of them!
Thank you all so much! I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!! I love this time of year! :)
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