Not too much has happened since my last
post. We are still in the process of our home study. We have LOTS
of training to do. We need 10 hours of Hague Training for
international adoption & 24 hours of Ohio Adoption Training. It
is all online but it is hard to do in between work & Jack! We
still have a LOT to do for our home study & need to get moving
quicker if we want to have everything submitted to Ethiopia by the
end of the year, which is my goal! We are waiting on our OH &
FBI Background Checks to get to our home study agency. Need our fire
inspection, find all of our financial paperwork, & a few other
miscellaneous things. Only once EVERY piece of paper is received by
our home study agency will they schedule our interviews. After that
is done we will hopefully be approved. Once we receive a completed
home study we have to start working on our dossier. Our dossier is
all of the paperwork that is required by Ethiopia. We will need to
submit our home study to US Immigration to be cleared & can take
up to 90 days although has been averaging 5 weeks.
I am just SO ready to get all of this
paperwork done & start WAITING for our referral. We have NO idea
how long the waiting could be. Since we are adopting a “special
needs” infant it is hard to judge the timeline. A healthy referral
is taking about 12 months right now. I would expect our referral
will be before that as the special needs list is only about 10 people
vs 60 for a healthy child. I think most of the families on the
special needs list are open to a child 0-4 years old so it is
possible once we are on the list, that those behind us could get a
referral first because we are requesting 0-6 months. My hope is to
have them home by their 1st birthday but God knows what is
going to happen.
Also in the mean time we need to raise
A LOT of money! I have never been a beggar but we do need a lot of
help! I KNOW God will provide the funds whether through donations,
fundraisers or grants! I am considering a yard sale in a few weeks
if we can get donations to sell. We gave most of our stuff away when
we moved so we don't have much to sell. I am also hoping to have a
spaghetti fundraiser dinner in October. Anyone that wishes to make
donations can do so in several ways. See the fundraising page. Tax
deductible donations are now available.
Please be in prayer for our adoption
journey! Pray for finances, patience, guidance & especially for
our child on the other side of the world!
