Not yet...

We've learned that Hope's dossier is not ready yet in China.  The agency is going to a check on her file about once a month so it looks like we'll have to wait until this time next month and check again.  Its not a big surprise and I'm not terribly disappointed, knowing that these things take time and God may have an entirely different plan in store for us.  We are going to continue to pray that her paperwork would move through seamlessly and so would ours so we can "meet in the middle!"

In the last week I've been so blessed by two ladies who have been showering  Hope and our entire family with prayer.  One of the women I became connected with online has actually been praying specifically for Hope for a long time and was longing to know if there was a family pursuing her.  Its quite the story and I'll have more to share about how God has used her and has brought us together.  I'm simply amazed at how BIG and how GOOD God is.

You may notice that some photos are no longer here on my blog of Hope.  If you'd like to see new photos of her, I will be sure to include links to the photos on her foster home's blog.  There is a fine line about how much information a foster home can share on the Internet and with those people praying for and pursuing adoption of the children they care for.  There are many guidelines and laws impacting Chinese adoption and we don't want to do anything that could compromise our adoption process.

Of course once we have officially received our referral and know who our daughter will be, pictures will be a MUST and once given the adoption agency stamp of approval we will post as many as we get :)

So we're still praying and waiting which we're learning is VERY typical to this adoption process.  I guess we better get used to it!

Special Focus Child!?!?

I don't know how to write this update without posting my optimism so I'm just gonna go with it.  We received a gentle nudging from some adoption friends asking about whether or not our adoption agency is willing to try and secure Hope's paperwork for their agency and for us.  Of course, that is what we're trying to do and our agency has been aware of that.  But yet it got me to thinking that I should probably make a call to the director of  Holt's China program to see if there is anything more we should be doing in trying to secure  Hope's file for our family.

So yesterday I made the call.

After a great visit I learned a bit more about the way in which we might be able to secure Hope's file which is far different from how I had originally thought the process would go.  I thought that because Hope's condition is correctable that she would be considered a "Child of Promise."  Child of Promise adoptions take place when a child available for adoption with a minor, correctable condition is placed onto a shared list and all agencies scramble to those children to match them with their adopting families-usually during the middle of the night on the computer-when they are released.  This is kind of a difficult situation because so many variables go into whether your agency is able to lock a child's file before its locked by another party.  Its very iffy and that is how we assumed Hope's  file would be handled.

But it sounds like we were wrong.  And that's a VERY GOOD thing.

The China Program Director feels that Hope's condition, while certainly correctable, is not likely to be considered "minor" which therefore makes her eligible for a different type of matching process.  We are now 99% sure that Hope's adoption will be a part of a Special Focus group for children whose conditions are considered to be more involved or significant.  We don't see it that way, but I guess needing a bunch of surgeries is a sure thing so thats enough to qualify as "significant."  Special Focus children are able to be matched with families through a much different process and one that eliminates  the challenges of snatching a child from a shared list in the middle of the night with no guarantees.

To put this complicated process in very simple terms:  There is a chance that if Hope's file is ready for adoption in China right now that we could lock her file very soon without all of the unknowns of the shared list and waiting until we have a Log In Date.  It seems our odds of being able become Hope's forever family have increased.  God is moving mountains and parting the seas to bring our daughter home!

As if that isn't good enough news for one day, check out this big girl standing up in the middle of the floor all by herself at just shy of 11 months old!  Click here for the picture we discovered :)

At this point, I can barely sleep wondering if her paperwork is ready and if we could be getting our referral in the next week or so.  I know that I won't know anything until next week, I suppose.  My gut tells me that her paperwork hasn't been started yet by her home orphanage, which means a wait of at least one to two months before we could secure her file.  That is still much sooner than when we were expecting a referral...more like January/February which is so very encouraging.  If you're in the business of praying and would be so kind to pray for our family, we could really use prayer that this part of the process goes smoothly and that we would know who our daughter will be as soon as possible!  Next week would be great :)

PS.I should add that even though we may know who our daughter is earlier than the typical process, it will not speed the process up all that much at all.  Maybe a few weeks at most, but we're plugging away!

Home Study?!?

You may be wondering what this Home Study business is all about.  Basically, its an opportunity for a social work to meet with us and learn about our family.  They will be talking to us as a family and also individually about who we are and what has brought us to our interest in adoption.  They'll be making sure our home is a safe, loving environment for a child to call home as well.  I'm actually really looking forward to it because when the visits are complete (2-3...I don't really know for sure), the social worker will put together a document that tells all about our family so that our agency and China will know all about us as they match us with a child.

There is one glitch to our Home Study already, but those hiccups are to be expected in this process and we are simply rolling with the punches at this point.  Our Home Study will not be officially "complete" and ready to be authenticated in Washington, DC (the last stop before it goes to China with the rest of our Dossier) until we attend a Parenting class (called Parents In Process or PIP class) in Omaha which is only offered every other month.  This month there was a class that was offered and is actually happening right now as I type this, but we couldn't attend because I didn't want to have to take off of work my second day of school.  That would be trying to pack to pack too much in to this very busy time.  So we have to wait for the PIP class to be offered again on October 7th and 8th.  We will not have our Home Study officially complete until that time and that's okay :)

For now, we're just praying that we're healthy and strong enough for the Chinese government to consider us acceptable candidates to adopt one of their precious children.  We'll see...

FBI Clearance!

On August 18th we found out that our prints for the FBI have cleared and that we have recieved police clearance from criminal and child abuse activity from the state of South Dakota (for both Carl and I) and Minnesota and Iowa for Carl!

Apparently we weren't on the FBI's Most Wanted List...go figure :)

We are getting very close to beginning our home study which is very exciting.  The only remaining steps are our health physicals which are scheduled for Monday, August 22nd for me and Wednesday, August 31st for Carl.  After those are complete and our test results come back, we will be ready to for the social worker to come out and begin this next step!

Passports are Here!

On August 8th we recieved our Passports in the mail!  We can travel outside the country and can't wait to get our China stamp in our book :)