We are up to our eyeballs in paperwork. We spend our evenings talking about certified copies, notaries, dossiers, and parenting techniques. We are checking our emails every hour (no, seriously, I do) in hopes of any tiny tidbit of information about our son. We are meeting, planning, crafting, worrying, and praying. Oh yeah, and praying, and praying, and praying some more! We are working our tails off trying to bring our baby home.
Where are we now? We are parents.
When Khylee and I were making a tentative timeline for our future blog posts a few months ago (Khylee is uber organized, so yes, months ago!) never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that by our third post we would be this far in the process. Never. You know what though? God can do anything, you know-far more than you could ever imagine, guess or request in your wildest dreams! (Ephesians 3:20)
Just to catch you up to speed… February 13, 2011 – The day the Lord said “Do it! Adopt the child.”
May 4, 2011 – Completed application #1 with Dillon International
June 29, 2011 – Submitted application #2
September 17th, 2011 – Adoption Workshop in Tulsa at Dillon International
September 30th, 2011 – Completed part #1 of our home study
October 26th, 2011 – We got to see the first photo of our son!
We took one look at his perfect little face and cried tears of joy! I cannot explain the million different emotions that I experienced. It was as though a hand of steel grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let it go. I felt so hopeful, yet hopeless all at once. The urgency I felt at that moment is inexplicable. In that moment I knew, we will do whatever it takes to bring our son home!
Please note: This is not the norm for international adoption. This timeline is honestly much more accelerated than the “average” adoption. God has allowed our process to be shorter than most, and I praise Him daily for this!
At this point, we still have paperwork to do, a room to decorate, furniture, clothes and toys to buy, parenting books to read, patience to learn… We are adding to our list daily.
We cannot explain how thankful we are. We cannot begin to tell you how you have blessed us with your prayers, your words of encouragement, your ideas, you showing up at our fundraisers, volunteering your Saturdays, crafting with us, praying over us, not to mention the financial support! It all means so much. More than you will ever know.
We will be hosting our first fundraising event this Saturday, November 19th. There are several ways we could use your help:
Volunteer a few hours of your time to help take care of the children.
If you need to go shopping or need a couple of hours to clean your house, your children are welcome to come hang out with us!
Pass along the word to people you know who would be interested.
Thanks again to everyone for all your support! It means so much to all four of us to know that we have a family of people standing with us to help us bring our precious children home!Read more...
The adoption process has a lot of different steps that Adam and I had no idea existed before we started. There is a ton of paperwork to complete, copies to make, doctors visits to go to, parenting education to attend, and a lot of new vocabulary to learn.Some of you may be familiar with the process, but for those of who you aren't this post is for you. Here is a time line of how it all works:
Application: involves a lot of the paperwork. You fill out an application all about you and your spouse, you get copies of birth certificates, marriage license, social security cards, you ask people to complete a reference for you, etc. This also ensures that you meet the criteria for the country program you are applying to (i.e. you have been married the required number of years, so many divorces, if you are single)
Home-study: If your application is approved by the agency then the agency completes the home study which consists of two visits with a social worker. The two visits are to assess the home and to get to know the couple or family. In the "home assessment" the social worker looks for things like smoke detectors and a fire extinguisher, not if you have any dust on your dining room table. He or she also talks to you about things you put in your autobiography (something that is a part of the application). The social worker who completes the home study has a vital role in the process as they approve the home for a certain number of children, age range, etc. (usually the decision is based upon what the couple has expressed to the worker).
Dossier: is a collection of certified or notarized copies of documents such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc., the home study, pictures of your house- that are submitted to the country where you are desiring to adopt. Every country has a different process of what documentation they require.
Wait list: once the dossier is submitted to the country, the family gets put onto their agencies wait list. The agency gives you a time-line for how long they anticipate you to wait for a referral: 8 months, 24 months, 4 years... This is probably one of the hardest parts of the journey because there is a lot of unknown: when will you get the phone call, how long will you have to wait? what if it is longer than what they said?, what if is shorter?, will I be able to take off work at a moments notice?, how much will flights cost? and the list could go on...
Referral: This is the blissful moment when someone from the agency calls you to tell you there is a child or children that matches what you specified you were willing to accept. Often times families get to see a picture of the child, medical information, the child's history (if known). The family can choose to accept or decline the referral based upon this information.
Trip 1: If the family accepts the referral than plans are made to the take the first trip to the country (not all countries require two trips, but both Ghana and Honduras do). On this trip the family gets to meet the child, visit where the child lives, and begin the legal process of adopting him or her. Often this trip takes between 7-10 days.
Trip 2: Then the family comes home. Again, this is probably one of the hardest things to do is to leave your child for 3-5 months while the paperwork gets done. The family then returns for the second trip. For the Folsoms' their second trip will be another 7-10 days, for the Forgetys' the trip will last anywhere from 3-6 weeks. On the first trip the parents only make trips to the orphanage to visit the kiddo, on this trip that precious little girl or boy gets to stay with you at your hotel and the actual parenting process begins. During this time the child legally becomes a part of your family so that when they step onto U.S. soil they are U.S. citizens.
U.S. Court: Even though the adoption is legal, our agency recommends that you finalize the adoption here in the United States.
I caution you though to remember that while I laid the process out pretty black and white, how it can play out in reality can look different for every family. Bureaucracy can slow paperwork down, a judge can discover one error in the paperwork and require it to be resubmitted, or the court can close for a season or decide to stop all adoptions from a particular region in a country.
So there you have it friends! I hope that you all found this educational. Adam and I are currently are waiting for our adoption agency to approve our home study and we hope to have our dossier completed by January.
When you start this journey you don't expect some of the things you encounter. (We sure didn't, anyway!) We have already encountered racism, close-mindedness, the uninformed, and ignorance.
Recently I was struggling with the thought "Are we doing the right thing?" Is this really what the Lord is calling us to? In "small town America" will we be subjecting our child to unnecessary racism, ridicule, and close-mindedness?
One evening this was heavy on my heart. My friend sent me this link. (I am amazed how God continuously uses her to speak to me, comfort me, encourage me... little ole me!)
As soon as I saw this video I immediately forwarded the link to my husband and three friends. I wish EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THIS PLANET would watch this video.
Racism is NOT biblical. It is SIN.
If you look at a child and see anything other than a beautiful being created by God, THAT, too is sin.
I hope that when you look at a child (especially my child) you see a million different things. I hope the color of his skin will not be one of them.
November 6th is Orphan Sunday. A day set aside for believers to remember and pray for the millions of children in our world that are without a family. I pray that you will not let this Sunday come and go, but that you will earnestly pray about how YOU can be involved in taking care of the orphan.
Maybe it means sponsoring a child through World Vision, financially supporting a family that is choosing to build their family through adoption, becoming a foster parent, praying for children in need of forever homes, throwing a baby shower for a family that has decided to foster children, spending a week of vacation loving on children in an orphanage, signing up as a volunteer at DHS to spend time with children in a local shelter, or choosing to adopt. There are so many ways to fulfill the command we have been given "to defend the cause of the fatherless." We can all do something, what will you do? Read more...
