Well, it has been a good while since our last post. Things happen slowly in the adoption process—so we’ve been told. However, the last couple of weeks have been full of small milestones so we thought we would share.
As we mentioned last time, our Orientation was scheduled for December 15th. We drove to Columbus for our first meeting with our agency. We finished this 8 hour day and signed up for our next and final class, on January 19th. We got an urgent email from the agency just 3 days later asking if we would be willing to come and complete this second day of classes that same week! Of course we were so excited to keep things moving, so we arranged to make our second trip to Columbus in 1 week. Our state and agency requirements for adoption education were complete.
The next step: WAITING. Our home study was completed by a separate agency, so our new agency had to review and approve it as well. We also needed to collect a couple more pieces of paperwork—one being a copy of our Infant CPR cards which we were scheduled to receive on January 9th. We are happy to announce that our CPR training is complete, and our home study has been approved by our new agency—milestone #2.
During this waiting period, we also spent much time filling out applications for financial assistance. We filled out a total of 5 applications, 3 of those for grants and the other 2 for interest free loans. These forms are NOT easy. Hundreds of questions about our lives, our current children, our church, our beliefs and last but not least, our finances, on forms ranging from 5 to 10 pages each. How happy I was when I put that last envelope in the mail. Our third goal was reached—we had sent applications to all known possibilities for financial aid.
Guess where we are now? WAITING! We wait to hear from our adoption agency with news of a possible match. And though we received a ‘no’ from our first grant application today, we now wait up to 4 more months to hear from the other four. We wait to see which precious little baby God has planned for us to take care of.
