The Homestudy is DONE!!!!

Today was a big milestone, the "home visit" portion of the home study. This marked the conclusion of a hectic month of preparation. First, there were the doctor visits. All three of us, including Alexander, had to go see a doctor to make sure we were healthy enough to adopt. Then, there was the paperwork. A twelve page application, background checks, letters of reference, and we both had to write an autobiography. On top of that, Melissa worked her tail off to get the house ready with a lot of reorganizing, throwing away stuff, and scrubbing and cleaning. It has been an exhausting several weeks!

The social worker came at 9 O'clock prompt. We have had a number of social workers visit our home over the past year to work with Alexander, and so we expected this visit to be similar, I guess. All of the social workers who have visited us in the past have been very laid back and chatty. However, our home study worker was very formal. Nice, polite, but very businesslike. There were many hard question about our personal lives and how we interact with each other, and how we plan to interact with our adopted children. It was rather intimidating, but we got through it and anticipate that we will be approved without any problems. We all sighed a big sigh of relieve when it was done, and promptly went to Red Robin for lunch and to celebrate.

Our next big step is to sign with an agency. We have been praying and researching different agencies for a couple of months now, and we are tentatively leaning toward a particular agency that has a special program for adopting waiting children. Waiting children are children who are less likely to be adopted for a variety of reasons, and therefore this agency has a established a fund that pays for a significant portion of the adoption expenses. In our case, we are considering adopting two siblings who are somewhat older (perhaps 3-6 years old). These children qualify for the special program because they are older, and because they are siblings, two factors that make them much less likely to be adopted. (People typically try to adopt infants, and only one at a time). We see this as a good option for us, because we really see this adoption as a calling from the Lord, and it seems as if it would be a blessing to adopt a child who is less likely to be adopted because of his or her age.

On a side note, we met a pastor on Wednesday night who was visiting from another church in Missouri. He and his wife had recently finalized an adoption of a teenage boy from Mexico. This was our first opportunity to talk to someone who has actually done an international adoption, and he was very encouraging and reassured us of God's ability to provide the needed finances to get this done. I personally feel that the Lord arranged for this brother to visit our church on Wednesday night just so he could share his experience with us.

Well, that's it for now. Thank you for your prayers, and encouragement! We appreciate it very much.

Homestudy scheduled

Great news! We have the homestudy scheduled for the weekend of the 21st! We are in the process of filling out all of the paperwork, and boy there is a lot of paperwork! It is kind of like filling out a job application, but even more in-depth. There's a background check, and we both have to write a small autobiography. Also, all three of us will have to be interviewed and we'll have to go have physicals done. Wow! The entire process culminates in the home visit, where the social worker will come out and spend three hours interviewing us and checking to make sure our home is a safe environment for adopted children. I think that if we had started this process a year ago we would be very intimidated at the thought of doing this, but the experience of having the social workers and therapists come out to work with Alexander over the past year has really helped us to be prepared for the homestudy. We really see the experiences of the last year as being the Lord's hand in preparing us for this. God is good!

Also, we went and applied for Melissa's passport last Saturday. (I already have mine from the mission trip in August) It was a small, seemingly insignificant step in the overall process, but it was still exciting! I think it is important to set goals along the way and this was one that we actually got done! Woohoo!

After the homestudy, we need to get our USCIS approval. This is basically pre-approval from the United States government to adopt a foreign child. This costs $830, so that will be our next big financial goal.

Also we are very quickly approaching the point where we will have to make a decision about an adoption agency. This is a very huge and important decision, and I'm still not even sure how to begin to make it. There are so many factors to consider. So, please pray that we would have wisdom in making this decision.