Big Changes

It occured to me last week when John David had to tell Chad's parents about the changes with our adoption that maybe I need to give an update on what has been happening. About a week after my last post we heard from our homestudy agency that the government had issued a report that said that all people trying to adopt from Nepal should seriously consider switching countries. They have just not been successful in adopting out any children this past year. People who had their dossier's submitted early last year are still waiting for their referrals. And there's also been some concern that the Nepal adoption program has been corrupted. Even if we were able to get our dossier ready to submit by July, it was not looking like Nepal would be the best choice for us. So after hearing about all of this, I asked our social worker what country she would recommend for us to change to. She suggested that we consider Lifeline's China Special Needs program. Any "imperfection" in a child is considered a special need, so there may be minor or correctable things that we could handle. Lifeline also have a very successful CSN program. They actually adopted 40 children through this program last year! This was very encouraging for us since we had not seen any success with the Nepal program. It was kind of funny that this is what she suggested because China is where I started when I first started thinking about adoption. I had even seriously considered the Special Needs program. I honestly can't remember why we went away from this, but it seemed right for us to be brought back to it. We met with the CSN coordinator at Lifeline and she gave us a list of special needs for us to research and think about what we felt like we could handle. I felt like we had a few weeks to make our decision because we were still waiting on our background checks to come back before our homestudy could be completed. On March 19 our background checks came in the mail. So I emailed our social worker and told her to change the country in our homestudy to China! We also had to leave our first adoption agency since the only international country that they work with is Nepal. Thankfully, they were very gracious about it. The only problem that we have run into with changing countries is with Immigration. China is a Hague country, but Nepal is not. That means that there are different forms that you have to file with Immigration. So we will have to submit the other form and send in more fees. We are going to be able to use the fingerprints that we already had done by Immigration so that is good. We certainly did not want to have to do that again. So that is it. We are still determined to adopt. We know that our daughter is out there somewhere, we just have to find her. Hopefully, we are on the right path now. But we will continue to ask God to direct our steps!

News From Nepal

It is encouraging that we have received some news about adoptions in Nepal. Since we have started this process, there have been very little children that were actually being adopted out of Nepal. Apparently there has been some political problems in the country and because of this adoptions have not been a top priority for the government. But last week, our agency called to tell us that they finally had some news from Nepal. They said that Nepal is going to try to get all of the 2009 adoptions processed by April. This is very excited news for those people who submitted their dossiers last year. Some have been waiting for a year to receive their referrals. Maybe now they can have hope that they will be able to get their children home very soon. She also told us that Nepal will be accepting dossiers between April 15 and July 15 for those of us who have been accepted into the 2010 program.

So what does this mean for us? Well now we have a deadline for submitting our dossier. But we have no control over how quickly we can get this done. Right now we are waiting for our fingerprints to come back (a process that we have been told can take up to 4 months) before our homestudy can be completed. There has already been a delay in this because DHR changed the method that they used with the fingerprints. Our fingerprints were sent back to us and we had to do a few additional steps to submit our fingerprints. But we have done what they have required and resent our fingerprints. I am hopeful that the reason they changed the process is so that it can be done a little quicker. Once our fingerprints come back, our homestudy will be submitted to DHR where it will be for 4-6 weeks. From there it will go to the Atlanta CIS office where it will be for 6-8 weeks. And then we will begin work on our dossier and once it is completed it will be submitted to Nepal.

All of this is completely out of our hands. We have done everything that we can do up to this point. We sent our final paperwork to Lifeline today. So, hopefully, when our fingerprints come back it will not take long to complete our homestudy and get it sent to DHR. I am praying that all of this will happen and we will get our dossier to Nepal by July. I know that only God can make it work out. I have to put my complete trust and hope in Him that it will be done in His perfect timing.

Fundraisers and Homestudies

We have officially begun fundraising for our adoption. Our first fundraiser is through Just Love Coffee. We have our own store where you can go and purchase coffee. We get $5 for every bag that is sold. It would be a great way to help us adopt our little girl and we would really appreciate any help that we can get.

I am very excited that we have made a lot of progress with our adoption in the past few weeks. We had our first homestudy meeting on January 19. Our second meeting was on January 26, where we each went in for individual interviews. And then our last meeting was on February 4. This was the one where our social worker came to our house and met the boys. So now we are done with all of our homestudy meetings. They all went very well (at least we felt like they went well). I was a little surprised at how easy all of the interviews were, I guess I expected it to be a little more intense. But I am so glad that we are done with that part of our homestudy.

There is still a lot to do before the homestudy is complete though. We are waiting for our fingerprints to come back . Apparently that can take a few months. We still have a lot of training to do. We are deligently working on that and trying not to get overwhelmed by the amount of information that we have to learn. And we also have to get our physicals done. So it will still be a while before our homestudy is complete, but we have made a lot of progress.

Everything that we do feels like we are getting a step closer to bringing our daughter home and that is something that can not happen fast enough. We know that this will all happen in God's perfect timing, but we will do whatever we can to help the process along.

Finally Starting!!

I am so excited! I feel like we are finally doing something with our adoption. Since we decided that we were going to adopt in November, we have been waiting to actually get started. I have never been very good at waiting. I am definitely NOT a patient person. I know that God is going to use our adoption as a lesson in patience. I will have to learn to depend on him to take care of this process when so much of it is out of my hands and we are at the mercy of other people to make things happen.

I knew that with adoption there was a lot of waiting involved. I just didn't expect it to happen at the beginning. First it was waiting on bloodwork to come back so that we could send in our initial application to our adoption agency. Then we had to wait for the agency to send their questionnares to all of our references. Some did not recieve them at first, so they had to be resent. Then we waited while our references sent their letters back. Finally, they all came in and we were officially accepted! After waiting for the holidays to end, we were able to get our application in to our homestudy agency. Now we have been accepted by our homestudy agency and we are ready to begin! Yesterday, we went to the police station to have our fingerprints done. We have an appointment with our adoption agency in Tupelo in Monday and on Tuesday we go to Birmingham for our first homestudy meeting. After waiting for two months, we are finally making steps to bring our little girl home!