On July 12th 2009 we jumped headfirst into what we thought God was telling us to do! We didn't have $27,000 laying around. We didn't know how to start the process, we didn't know anything except that we needed to adopt a child halfway around the world.
We spent that entire Sunday researching agencies and gathering information. We slept on it, but the next day we thought we had found our agency and so we already filled out a pre-application form and waited. We did not have to wait long and by Tuesday we had been pre-approved for Ethiopia!
We continued to pray about this. It was scary and very exciting all at the same time. By Wednesday we had already received an information packet and official application in the mail. We were moving right along! That Friday we went up to our agency's office and met with them and asked all the right questions and officially turned in our application!
Then we had our first "waiting period". Our application would not be reviewed by the social services department until Wednesday the 22nd Peter's, 23rd Birthday. Now the ironic thing about this is that we both had to be 23 in order to adopt. God definitely had his hand in all of this.
Wednesday came quickly and I remember getting the call at work - I was nervous and she told us we were officially accepted into the Ethiopia program! Wheh, we made it out of the starting gate!
By the next day we had recieved our orientation packet with a bunch of contracts we needed to sign and a very large check that needed to go out with them! We certainly did not have that type of money laying around, but we did our best to scrounge up the money. We had 3 months to come up with this money and we thought we might need every bit of those 3 months to come up with that kind of money.
Within 1 week, God provided the funds necessary to turn in our orientation packet. On our 3rd wedding anniversary July 29th, we had the last of the money we needed to continue on the journey.
We turned in our packet and quickly recieved our home study and dossier planners in the mail. We were finally overwhelmed by the daunting stacks of paperwork we needed to compile. My life became these documents! I was very proud of myself that within 3 weeks I had completed all of our home study paperwork and we were able to get it out of the house. Unfortunately our state fingerprinting process became a real pain, real fast. We were ready to proceed, but without the fingerprints we could not. The state fingerprints were a thorn in my side for 9 weeks, but we finally received the clearance we had been waiting for in the mail on October 13th!
We were ready to get the home study done so we could complete the dossier which had been in our house, ready to go, for several weeks. Our social worker started the home visits immediately and the next 2 weeks became a whirlwind of activity in our house. Cleaning for home visits, having a 4 hour visit that went until 10 at night. Finishing up the home study. The report was completed within 2 days, we just had to wait until over the weekend!
This week has been an emotional rollercoaster and yet, we were pretty calm about it all and knew what we needed to do. We needed to pray. We prayed and prayed this week that things would come together. This past Monday things looked very bleak that we would get wait listed this week. One more week wouldn't have been horrible, but I just felt like we had to get on the lists this week. There was so much to get sorted out, but I felt like we needed to get on the lists this week to get "our baby".
Tuesday brought more bad news that other things needed to get sorted through. I had a few phone calls with our social worker on Tuesday and Wednesday brought no news. I really wanted to bug them on Wednesday but I could feel God telling me to leave it alone, and just pray. Thursday we got word that our home study was under review and needed a few changes. Wow! That was another miracle. We were told 5-7 business days and this was 2!!! We were so close! God was listening and giving us the miracle we had been asking for! Still a lot needed to be sorted through on Friday for it to happen. We continued to pray all day Friday and I received word at noon on Friday that the home study was finalized and she would look through our dossier and get back to me by the end of the day! Things were moving, but if one little thing in our dossier was not done correctly we would not get our numbers. It came down to the wire but a few minutes before the office closed we got the phone call we've been waiting weeks for!
We were on the wait lists! Such a feeling of emotions! We were done with the paper chase. We are now waiting for our baby! We are so happy and so excited and amazed at the miracle God provided for us this week. It truly is a miracle that things got sorted out.
Our first official waitlist numbers are:
Siblings - 14
Boy - 21
Girl - 43
We can finally prepare for this baby to come in to our family. This is real, this is going to happen! We are now entering another stage of waiting, but at least this time we know we will be moving closer to our baby! We are at such a high point in this journey and with all the lows of the past few months we feel great! Now we can prepare and anticipate the call from our case worker where she will say "There is a baby I would like to talk with you about!"
We are coming for you Baby Dash!!!
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