Getting Caught Up

It has been a while since our last post. For all of you who have been eagerly anticipating our newest news, I apologize for the long wait. As many of you know or have personally experienced as a college student or higher education professional, the beginning of the school year is always crazy. Most of the craziness is highly anticipated and wonderful in many ways. Such is our year...off to a crazy fun start!

But where has that left us in the paper chase? Instead of putting the adoption process on hold, we've been slowly plugging away on various aspects that we have control over. Other aspects of which we have little control, we have been waiting patiently. So here's the update...

At the end of July we both got physicals done with a wonderful doctor in Cleveland. We found out that neither of us have TB or any other major diseases...I can't tell you how relieved I was! Just kidding. We submitted our final two Home Study documents (the physical paperwork and our financial statement) on August 5th! It was such a relief to have that huge chunk of paperwork out of our hands and in the hands of our wonderful social worker Debbie. She has since been diligently writing up our Home Study report.

While we have been waiting for the Home Study report, we checked on the rest of our list of to-do's for the paper chase and realized that we didn't have much left. One item that was fun to do earlier this month was writing our personal letter that will be given to the Ministry of Women's and Children's Affairs in Ethiopia. It was exciting to put into words our hopes and excitement for starting our family this way. Also, it was exciting thinking that our dreams will be read by someone in Ethiopia. So much of this process has been about us and our preparation, it was nice to place the focus on Ethiopia and how excited we are to allow their heritage and culture into our lives.

Another item on the to-do list was going through an on-line parenting course. Although we have been busy, it was nice to set aside some time and be reminded of the challenge that raising an adopted child will be. There was one particular article that we were asked to read that was especially enlightening. I'm going to wait on describing the details because I hope to place a link to this article on the blog at some point. Needless to say, both Michelle and I realized how grateful we were of our adoption agency because we have been prepared very well by them...nothing that was discussed in the parenting course was a surprise. Instead, it was a great refresher on the patience this process takes and the excitement that we can anticipate.

When we receive our Home Study (which has since been approved by our adoption agency and waiting to be notarized) we will apply to Immigration (getting permission to adopt and make our son a citizen of the US). After we are approved by Immigration we will put together the rest of the dossier.

The last few items on the dossier check-list are...receiving our recommendation letters (of which two of three have been approved already), putting together our family photo page and our home photo page, making copies of various documents like passports and drivers licenses, and finally, submitting the whole package to the agency for notarization and approval.

After we submit the dossier, we will start our waiting period. Although the waiting period will be the hardest part, we are excited to let everyone know that the length of time between submitting a dossier and receiving a referral has gone from 11-24 months when we started, to 8-12 months about 3 months ago, then to 6-8 months about 2 months ago, and finally it has been lowered to 5-7 months this past month. 5-7 months will still feel like forever, but that gives us excitement that we might be traveling to Ethiopia in April or May!

Thanks again for all your prayers of support and patience/diligence. We are excitedly approaching the end of the paper chase!!! (I think I have used the word 'excite' in its various forms at least 20 times in this post...I might need to change the title!) Anyway...we'll be updating more often, I hope, now that school is starting to settle into a more comfortable routine.

Looking forward to our next post...love, faith, grace and peace!