When it rains...

...it pours.

No, there is nothing drastically wrong.  This was just supposed to be our "laid back" day for the week with only one adoption related appointment.  I woke up at 5:30am and couldn't get back to sleep.  Things continued to almost comically worsen as the day continued, from a stolen credit card number (my second in the the past month), to all of my technological devices ceasing to function simultaneously, to a broken mothers ring, and culminating in discovering that N has a fever of 102.6 tonight.  What could make that even more interesting, you might ask?  The fact that tomorrow S and I will divide and conquer to cram in a total of four adoption related appointments within a two hour period of time, one of which is our poor baby getting stabbed for a TB test.  That would be less than fun under normal circumstances, but I feel awful having to do it when she already feels so badly.  PLEASE pray that her temperature is normal tomorrow morning and that she feels like herself again.

There is good news, though, so let's end with that.  We got the remainder of our birth and marriage certificates in the mail today, which is no small deal considering I thought it would take six weeks.  We also got fingerprinted today, and will hopefully have our police clearance results by the end of the week.  That means that we could potentially have all of our paperwork in by the end of this week!  One of my meetings tomorrow is my individual interview with our social worker.  S is scheduled for next week.  I'm hoping to have completed all of our Hague training by then as well.  If all of the aforementioned comes together as I hope (I'm just asking for it... I know...), we could officially have our part of the home study finished by the end of next week.  Our social worker will then do a home visit and write up her final report on us.  Then, from what I understand, we send the completed home study to our placement agency, which will approve it or ask us to make any corrections, and then forward it on to India, which would make us eligible for a referral at any point after that.  

That is exciting news!  It seems close, but still very far away, and hangups are always a distinct possibility with adoption.  So we'll be prepared for the challenges, hope for the best, and just worry about today.  Well, I'll be honest... I'm pretty worried about tomorrow.  Please pray especially for N, that the Lord would heal her little body, and make the test  tomorrow as trauma-free as possible.  Thanks, friends!

 

Last Call for this T-shirt order

I'm planning to put in an order for adoption T-shirts on Monday morning (11/28), so if you would like one (or many), please let me know by Sunday night. Also, for those who have ordered, I may need to do one design (India with "Simply Love" written across it) instead of separate ones for men and women because I don't have nearly enough orders to do two separate designs. If that changes your mind about the shirt, please let me know asap. Thanks!

Click here to order

Free Book

Check out this amazing book by K.P. Yohannan full of the redemptive stories of India's lost children.  I don't think it is possible to read it and not be moved.  

Also, it actually is completely free.  You just fill out your information and the book shows up on your doorstep a few days later!

No Longer a Slumdog 

Climbing the mountain

I wish I had something exciting to update.  In reality, I am spending most of my free time trying to wade through our homestudy checklist and our dossier checklist (which is six pages long).  I actually had to color code the dossier checklist just to try and break it down into things I could accomplish on my own, and documentation I had to request from others.  It looks like we could be waiting about six weeks to get our birth certificates.  Then we get to send them right back to have them apostilled.  I'm trying to gather as much documentation together as I can and then go have it notarized, certified, and apostilled all at the same time.  That will help in keeping up with expiration dates, but it is all incredibly overwhelming.  I'm just taking it one day at a time, making it a goal to take care of at least one thing on the list each day if possible.  I don't know that I'd really call this a paper chase.  It's more like a paper plod!

I have, however, been living vicariously through many family blogs that I've been following as they travel to meet their sweet babies for the first time.  What a surreal thought.  I can't even imagine.  It seems like the paperwork is taking forever, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine what it will be like to see a picture of our little one someday, to know her name and her story.  That's why this must be a journey.  The Lord prepares us for each step so that when it happens, it no longer seems surreal but predestined, as if it could not be any other way.  I am truly grateful, not just for this calling, but for the journey, where the Father molds and shapes our hearts and minds.  Perhaps, next Thanksgiving, we will have a new little face for which to be thankful, even if there are still many miles between us.     

Start your engines!

Let the chase begin, the paper chase, that is.  With our adoption agency's swift approval came a literal mountain of documentation to start wading through.  Thankfully, we have a dossier expert who made the effort to call me and talk me through every single requirement, and help me to know which items are priorities right now.  The most overwhelming part about the dossier is not just that we have dozens of documents to supply or have others supply, most of it needing to be notarized and apostilled, but that none of it can be more than a year old at any point in this process.  We will need to stay right on top of every single piece of paper to know when it expires, and make sure that it is renewed far enough in advance to get it to our agency, to India, and in to the hands of the necessary officials there.  Speaking as someone who will add things to my To Do list that I've already done, just for the satisfaction of checking them off, that is a little stressful.  None of it will really be done until we are back home with our child.  In 2+ years.  Welcome to my two year lesson in letting go and leaning on the everlasting arms!  As the song says:

"Two things you told me

That you are strong

And you love me"

Amen.

Our home study is the most crucial piece of the puzzle right now.  Once that is complete, we will technically be eligible for a referral, and can finish up the rest of the initial run on the dossier paperwork asap after the home study is sent to India.  Our first interview is Monday morning.  Please pray that the paper chase goes as smoothly as possible for us, that the documentation would all be correctly filled out and certified the first time through, and that we don't loose our sanity in the process!  The greatest part about this, though, is that we could potentially have our home study done in a month or so.  That means, come the first of the year, we will likely be on the waiting list for a referral!  We have no idea how long that wait will actually be (although it is estimated at 9-18 months), but we will be one giant step closer to knowing our baby and bringing her home!  Praise the Lord!

Agency Application is on its way!

After a month of trying to figure out how to orchestrate finances, we finally sent out our application to our adoption agency today!  As soon as they get it, they will email us the dossier paperwork.  We also got the invoice for our home study this morning, and immediately put that check in the mail so we can get started with our social worker asap.  So hopefully, we will be working on our home study and dossier paperwork within the next week.  Of the $7300+ that we put out today, only a little over $2K came from our fundraising ventures, so we are really praying that the Lord will just blow us away with his provision in the coming months.  Our initial milestone, which will get us paid up through everything we need to get our documents over to India is roughly $11K, so we still have a ways to go.  

However, I am trying not to stress out about the dollar signs that just happen to be smacking us upside the head right now, because our God is big enough to provide, even when we can't see how in the world He's going to do it.  Right now, I'm just incredibly grateful that we are truly plunging head first into the paper chase that will bring our baby home.  

I've read that "paper pregnant" moms often experience similar emotions to  biologically pregnant moms, and I am starting to recognize that as being completely true!  Poor S!  This will be a much longer pregnancy than when N was in her studio apartment, but I am already feeling the urge to nest at the very beginning, just like I did with her.  If I remember correctly, I started moving furniture around in the nursery about two weeks after finding out we were expecting.  At least then we were only a few months out.  This time we have a couple of years!  Still, I feel that Mamaw P. gene kicking in... Our house may look different every time people come over.  You just never know!  But I do know this, my sweet baby, we are coming!!!

Home study agency approval!

We have been approved by our home study agency and are ready to start filling out paperwork!  And my goodness, is there a lot of it!  This was definitely a much needed hug from the Lord today after the past week of spinning our wheels waiting on our funding.  We are still waiting on that part of things, unfortunately.  Please pray that things move swiftly there so we can get our application in with our adoption agency.  Filling out the dossier paperwork from them and our home study paperwork simultaneously will help to expedite the process on our end of things.  We are one step closer to actually being able to act on all this momentum.  Praise the Lord!