We are so close to being finished with the home study part
of the process, which is basically approval by our agency and by Texas to be an
adoptive parent. This part involved several face to face visits with a social
worker from our agency, including a home inspection, and multiple interviews
about how we were raised, how we plan to parent, our strengths and weaknesses
in marriage, and our ideas on adoption/ raising a child of a different race. Like
a really intense job interview that lasts for days. It also involved a lot of
paperwork from outside sources, sources that I cannot control or manipulate to
get documents completed on time, and that has required a lot of grace and
patience on our end as well. Just when I think my grace tank cannot be depleted
any more, something else pops up that requires me to squeeze just a little bit
more out. Thank you, Lord, for refilling my tank when you know I’m going need
it!
As if the home study process itself wasn’t stressful enough,
our home study coordinator (who we absolutely LOVE) ended up needing to resign
in the middle of it! She had already completed most of our visits for the
report when she decided to step down, so she agreed to continue to work with us
to at least get our report written up. As frustrating as it is to have to now wait
longer for a new person (who doesn’t know anything about us) to finalize the
report when we have done everything in our power to speed the process along, I
am reminded of the grace our home study coordinator showed us in staying on
longer just to help us out, and it makes it easier to extend that grace to the
next person we will be working with to get it finalized. {Side note: we are praying that our home study coordinator will be able
to stay on contract with our agency so we can continue to work with her
personally, so you can add that to your prayer list for us!}
Once our home study report gets finalized, then the first
round of paperwork can be sent off to the US immigration department (USCIS), which
will hopefully approve us to bring an internationally adopted child back into
the US whenever we receive a referral. Once we receive the approval from USCIS,
we are then ready to ship all of our remaining paperwork (which is actually the
bulk of the paperwork we’ve been working on the past few months) over to
Ethiopia and officially be placed on the waiting list! Woohoo! In the meantime,
we have a few more documents to collect and finalize, and we are basically at
the mercy of our agency to get our home study finalized soon. As I mentioned in
a previous post, our goal is to have our paperwork to Ethiopia by early June,
before the rainy season begins. During the rainy season in ET, the government
basically shuts down due to the lack of drivable roads, etc. so we would like
to have our paperwork delivered before that happens. {Please pray with us that our agency will finalize our home study
quickly, and that USCIS will have a quick turnaround time for our I-600A application
so that we can make it to ET by June!}
I know I have been unusually bad at answering emails,
returning calls, and being a good friend in general that past couple of months,
but I promise it won’t last forever, and to continue with my theme of grace, we
so appreciate the outpouring of grace we’ve been given by everyone during this
season! We have been blown away at
the generosity and support from our friends over the past couple of months,
feeling like we are in this with SO MANY PEOPLE! I can’t imagine walking this
road alone and I am overcome with gratitude for the people God has put in our
lives to support us in this season…we are already seeing how amazing adoption is,
and we haven’t even seen our children yet!
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