Hey folks! I hope everyone is having a great summer so far! I wanted to write an update just so everyone knows how things are going with our adoption.
It has been such a whirlwind summer that our home study has taken a few weeks longer and I haven't had any time to write a post. Thankfully it's been all great things- DR mission trip, VBS, CBF national assembly, chaperoning youth PASSPORT camp, and Samford friends reunion- that have kept me/us busy all summer long! With the summer winding down, it is our goal to have the home study FINISHED before I start back to school (or at least our part of it- it will take our social worker a couple of weeks to write up our huge 20 page report!)
Since my last post, we have had 2 more interviews for the home study. There are 4 total, 3 together and 1 individual plus a home tour. So a couple of weeks ago on July 19 we went to Lifeline in Birmingham for our individual interviews. Before having this interview we had to complete our autobiographies. This may sound like a simple task, but wow, it was a lot of work (at least for me!) There were all sorts of questions for us to answer about how we were raised, what kind of parents we hope to be, information about all of our immediate family, what we were like as a child, teenager, early adult, etc. At the interview she basically asked us about some of the same stuff that was in the autobiography to kind of clarify some details.
And today, we had our third interview and home tour. Just fyi, for anyone who has heard that they look inside your dryer, closets, or any of that stuff during the home tour (we heard all of that from various people), she didn't do anything like that! We literally just showed her every room in our house, which took less than 5 minutes. The main thing she needed to see was a fire extinguisher and count how many smoke detectors we had. So it was definitely not a very big deal! For the interview, we talked a lot about parenting techniques/mistakes/goals/etc. and about discipline.
Thankfully all we have left for our home study is our fourth interview which is scheduled for next week and to answer a couple more pages of questions about international adoption/transracial adoption and get our medical exams completed! That may sound like a lot, but if you knew all we had done already it feels like a piece of cake! So hopefully our home study will be complete by the end of August! The next step will be to apply to immigration, which will take another 3 months. As you can tell, the journey to adopt includes a lot of hurry up and wait. Sometimes all the waiting can be very discouraging, especially when we are so ready for our child to be here! I am often reminded of the song "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller. The main lines of the song are: I will serve you while I'm waiting and I will worship while I'm waiting. These are the things I try to focus on as we wait for our child to be home. I know, too, that this time is necessary as I can see God continually molding me (as He always is) into the mom I need to be.
Finally, I would ask you to please pray for us as we are at the point in the adoption where we have a decision to make on our program. As you know we are currently in the Colombia program. Choosing a program has been one of the hardest decisions we have made so far. Sometimes when people adopt they have a certain country they are drawn to or a certain region of the world, etc. We were not like that at all! We wanted to adopt as young a child as possible and after a lot of research we also wanted to stay with a country that is part of the Hague treaty. The requirements for adoption in each country is different (age, marriage length, age of child available, length of in country travel, etc.), and we decided on Colombia since it was a match for us. We had also strongly considered China, but at the time were too young. Well, we are now only about 6 months away from being old enough to switch to China if we wanted to. To sum it all up, we need to decide, for sure, in the next couple of months whether or not we are going to stay with Colombia or switch to China or Hong Kong. Next week at our fourth interview, we will probably talk to the Hong Kong coordinator, just to get a feel for that program to see if it is a better fit for us. This is a huge decision and one that we don't take lightly. Please pray that God will give us a strong, clear desire one way or the other so that we aren't second guessing this decision.
Thank you for your continued support and most importantly your prayers. We could not do this without our huge network of support behind us.
Blessings,
Sallie
