Getting Ready

Our lives are going to change forever.

Last summer Tom and I took several Foster/Adopt classes to learn more about the process and to see if we could determine what we wanted to do. We both had a gut reaction that fostering just wasn't for us. We stay fairly busy with work and church and it wouldn't be fair to a struggling child to impose that type lifestyle on them. More importantly, we didn't feel we had it in ourselves to be able to send children back into a potentially bad environment after growing to love them.

After attending our classes, we began to feel led to adopt a baby girl. We debated between adopting from China or Kazakhstan for several weeks until one day on my way to work I felt God was telling me "you have a daughter in Kazakhstan that you need to go get". That's it. We're adopting from Kazakhstan. I don't know about you, but that's all the more convincing I needed!

After Thanksgiving, we started researching adoption agencies and home study agencies and finally after New Years we had decided to use World Partners Adoption and Cherub International. We have been slow going for a while as we are still learning what types of things we need to be collecting for our paperchasing adventure but we're picking up speed.

This Sunday, May 15 is our first home study visit. We're cleaning house this week in preparation and filling out lots of paperwork for our social worker. We're anxiously awaiting our first meeting to make all of this official.

Please keep us in prayer! We've got a looooong way to go!

Learning and Fundraisers

Had a great chat with Traci and learned a few new things... more than anything just established a beginning relationship with one of the people that is going to be helping us with this process. I'm still coming up with fundraiser ideas... now it's just a matter of getting on the ball and starting to schedule events and get people involved in helping.

So Much Research...

 

I have arranged to talk with Traci tomorrow afternoon around 4:30 to get some general questions answered regarding the process and their agency. I'm anxious but also nervous about this the closer and closer we get to committing ourselves. But, God is faithful and will take care of us along the way!

LMI vs WPA

I received an email and a phone call from WPA a few days ago. Josh and Traci, the couple that will be our coordinators, are still on their trip, but I received call from the director and he emailed me as well. It's good to know that even if our main contacts are unavailable we can still get help from someone. I feel that both LMI and WPA are probably great agencies to work with, but I'm feeling a lot more confident in WPA just because of all the online research I've been doing. There are a lot more family websites posted from WPA and they keep journals of everything that happened along the way. Sounds like there are very few surprises and they have a very high success rate with their adoptions. I'm getting a little anxious about all of this now, because as soon as we sign on we're committed... that means a little Emily will officially be in our near future. (Although I'm sure at times it will feel like it's taking forever!)

Keep us in prayer.... lots of things will be happening once the ball gets rolling on this!

Picking an Agency

Received an email from Andrea at LMI today giving some reasons why she chose LMI as an agency when she adopted... she now works for them. It was enlightening, but still not totally convinced. Waiting to hear back from WPA... my contacts are on a trip to Guatemala right now and should have contact with me soon.

Adoption Proces

Tom and I have been praying for quite a while about God's plan for our family and we are now heading toward an international adoption from Kazakhstan (Kozz-ock-ston). We are currently comparing two adoption agencies: World Partners Adoption and Little Miracles International. We are gathering as much information as possible and trying to pinpoint which agency we will go with. After that, we will begin the homestudy process and get the ball rolling to bring home our daughter, Emily, who is out there somewhere.

 

I emailed both agencies today and asked for a little more information from them and asked them to compare themselves to the other agency. Should hear something back from them soon.