Moving right along

We are excited to announce some progress!  We have gotten all of the paperwork done for our Home Study!  A Social Worker has been assigned to us and we hope to have appointments with her set up in the next few days.  For the curious among you, here is an explanation of what this all means:

Home Study
The Home Study is a report completed by a licensed Social Worker that basically says that we have enough character and means to support a child.  This is done through about four face to face visits and loads of paperwork.

Paperwork
Many have asked about the timeline of the adoption and why it takes so long.  The short answer is Paperwork.  Paperwork takes many different forms, is completed in many different ways, and is obtained through various means.  Here is a short list of what we had to assemble JUST for the Home Study to begin:

Letter from our Employers with our salary and a statement that we are both employees in good standing.  Notarized.

Physical Exam.  Thorough Physical Exam.  Notarized

Financial Statement.  Assets, monthly budget, debts.

Life Story.  Four to five pages each of our lives from birth to today (there were almost two pages of questions to answer!).  I actually enjoyed this because I was reminded of how fortunate I was to have such a loving family and life of abundance.   I’m thankful for those high school teachers that helped me learn how to write a paper!  You do use those skills later in life!

Online Parenting Classes.  12 Hours.  We actually learned a lot from these seminars that we watched online and then took tests to see if we were paying attention.  It would have been simple except for the fact that we don’t have internet access at our home and you can’t watch them on our tiny phones (we tried). 

Background Check.  Almost forgot about the trip to the courthouse to get fingerprinted!  That was a new experience for us both! 

Letters from family and friends.  Our parents (read: Moms) had to write a letter explaining that we had a somewhat normal childhood and would make great parents ourselves.  A few friends did the same.  Thanks!!!

Hopefully you will understand why we have been working on this since late October.  It’s a lot when you are working 40 plus hours, running a farm and just living day to day.  But…… we are done with this step!  Bring on the next set of paper work (that would be the Dossier Building)!  The good news is that as we were getting our physicals, etc. we were also getting them to fill out the very similar (but not identical) paperwork for the next phase.  There will be more documents than listed earlier, and they will not only have to be notarized, but also certified by the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office AND authenticated by the Chinese Consulate in Houston, Texas.

When we get all the Dossier paperwork and the Home Study notarized, certified, and authenticated we will send it to our Agency, who will then send it to China.  By then it will probably be a stack of papers over 3” thick! 

It’s a long journey.  There are times that we are exhausted with all the paperwork.  But we press on, knowing that our children are waiting for us.  Thank you all for joining with us as we seek to bring our children home. 

“I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 3:14  NKJ