Adoption Update

Hey friends. If you haven't heard by now, we're adopting!! For the full story, go back one post and read and the details!

Several of you have been asking how things are going and where we're at right now in the process. Our application was filed on January 4. It is now March 10, so we are just over two months into this (typically the process takes 18-24 months). We have had all of our home study documents in place for about one month. We have had both of our home visits from our social worker. We are still waiting on one document that was misplaced or lost somewhere along the line (a clearance from when I lived in Mississippi). Once that is in and our social worker is able to connect with our local children and youth office to review our home study from when we were foster parents, THEN our home study should be written up, reviewed and finalized. Our social worker is hoping that she will have her first write up for us to review on Monday, March 14. However, she was having some difficulty getting in contact with Children and Youth. I'm hopeful that by the end of March we will have our home study finalized.

Can't wait until Little Sister is the one on Anne's lap!

As we have had these documents in place for awhile we began plowing ahead to gather the necessary paperwork for our dossier (another set of papers which will be sent to China). At this point we are waiting for one more reference and need to get one more paper notarized. Once we have those two things we will send that packet of papers to our agency's main branch in Oregon. We have opted to have them process all the dossier paperwork to get the special certifications and authentications. These things are very confusing and involve considerable amounts of time. For their fee we felt this was certainly worth it. I'm hoping to get the notary done on Saturday and it just depends when our friend gets time to write our last referral letter. Hopefully I will be sending these documents to Oregon next week.

So, to make a long story short, we're closing in on the paperwork part of our journey! That is a huge weight off our shoulders. There will still be some paperwork (filing for immigration, etc.), but mostly there will be waiting.

While we wait for paperwork to process and eventually we will be waiting to be matched with our daughter we will be doing some fundraising. As many of you know, adoption is very expensive, we were told to budget approximately $35,000. I'll post more about fundraising at a later date. For now, I'd absolutely love if you would PRAY for our remaining paperwork to go through smoothly, and for our daughter in China. Although we aren't matched with her yet, more than likely she has been born recently. We would love if you would pray for her birth family as well as her current caretakers.

Thanks, everyone!

xoxo,

Mama Hess