I realized today that it has been quite a while since I updated our blog about how the adoption is coming along. So far we have completed 4 different home study appointments and have 2 more left to finish. We have both of these scheduled for this month and hope to be finished with all home study paper work by the end of January!! That will be a giant sigh of relief to have literally hundreds of pieces of paperwork, article reading, and course training, completed!!
Because each country is so unique in how they process adoptions I will give you a quick little update on how Ethiopia does theirs. Hopefully starting in February we will begin getting together our Dossier (paperwork that goes to Ethiopia). I have no clue how long it takes to get ALL this paper work together but I have heard it a massive amount!! My prayer is that we will get this completed quickly and have that sent off at the end of February. That is probably very unrealistic but I will hope for the best. :) Once the paper work reaches Ethiopia and gets processed we will be given the much anticipated and highly coveted "Waitlist Number"for the referral of a child. Each month we will receive a new number depending on how many families ahead of us received a child. For example, as of right now we will start somewhere in the 90's and each month hopefully move up until we reach spot number 1. When the Ethiopian orphanages have a child ready to be adopted they start at the number 1 family on the list and try and match that families requests (age, gender) with the child they have available. They go up the list until they find a family that matches with this child. I am so beyond ready to finish all this paperwork and to start the "waiting" process. :) As of right now the timeline from start to finish is around 18 - 24 months but we are just excited that we are at least moving one step farther in this process. Thank you all sooooo much for your outpouring of love, words of encouragement, prayers, and financial donations! Without all of these things in combination, it would be very difficult to move forward in this process. We are thanking God each day for allowing us to be on this journey to bring our little boy home! I will definitely be posting updates as we finish up each of these steps to keep you all updated!!
And even though these two really don't know much about what all is happening I know that they will be overjoyed to have a new little brother to help take care of! :)
