ADOPTION UPDATES

We have completed the overwhelming process of collecting all of the necessary paperwork to start our homestudy. The homestudy is the process where a social worker visits our home (the state of Colorado requires three separate visits), examines our home and interviews us. He/she then writes up a long report that is submitted to our agency and to the orphanage in Taiwan. Hopefully we will be able to get our homestudy started this week.

We have been fingerprinted, have had background checks run on us, we've provided our complete financial history, we have completed detailed questionairres about our life history (thankfully the state of Colorado allows us to do this in place of writing and autobiography), we've had physicals performed for our whole family, we've had to go through training, we've had to provide copies of every significant document we have (birth certificates, passports, marriage liscense, tax returns, etc.), we've provided proof of health insurance for our adopted child & proof of employment, we've written a dear birthmother letter (which the birthmother in Taiwan may see), and we have put together a scrapbook of our family. We've already spent thousands of dollars and we're not even close to being finished (the entire adoption will cost us about $25,000). Sometimes the whole process is so overwhelming. I've struggled with not growing bitter over all that is required of us. But, we are confident that this is where God is leading us, so I'm willing to coninue providing what is required.

As soon as we get a draft of our homestudy into our agency we will officially be on the waiting list for our child. How exciting!! At that point we expect the wait for a referral to be close to 12 months.

P.S. If anyone has any unique fundraising ideas for our adoption let me know. We won't have to pay most of the money until after we get a referral, so we have a little while to raise some money.