90 Days and Counting

Yesterday we had our first meeting with our social worker.  This meeting took an hour and a half and it was almost completely about paperwork.  Things that we will have to fill out and things that we will have to get done some time in the next 90 days.  It was a bit overwhelming looking at everything that we will have to do on such a short time table.  When we were looking at the things that take 6-8 weeks to complete we quickly realized that we really need to start on this stuff like....last week.

The meeting with our social worker was actually quite pleasant.  I was worried that we were going to have to fight with her and constantly try to demonstrate the right 'image' in front of her in order to get her to write the right things on the home study.  But, based on our initial meeting, we are really feeling like things are going to go as planned.  It is funny how quickly we doubt what God has called us to do.  The call from the Lord was so clear that it kicked us into action immediately, and as soon as things were looking like they might be hard we began to question and compromise the calling.

We know that God is calling us to adopt four children from the Philippines, and as soon as we thought about the possibility that we might not get approved by our social worker for four children, we compromised.  "Maybe God was just trying to get us moving, and we should just try for siblings sets from 2-4" we thought.  God confirmed His calling to us with our social worker.  Everything looks like we are going to be approved for up to four kids!

So here is the process:
We have 90 days to get all 32 items on our checklist.
Once we have everything together, we will have a homestudy.  This is a series of interviews and home visits, where the social worker observes our life.
Once we are done with the interviews and home visits, we wait for the social worker to write her report.  This takes a couple of weeks, as the report can be 20 pages long.
Once the report is written, we get together some more information and put together our dossier.  I am not really sure how long this part takes.
Once our dossier is prepared, we send it in to be authenticated and approved.
Once it is approved we wait to be matched with our kids.  We will be adopting off of the special homes findings list, so on this step we get to 'pick' our kids.
Once we 'pick' our kids, the agency sends everything to ICAB, where they will match our family with said children (hopefully).
Once we are matched, we then wait for the Filipino government to get together all the paperwork and visas and what-not.  This part can take up to six months.
Once all that is done, we head to the PI to pick up our kids.
In all, we are looking at 16-24 months before we can bring home our children.

For all this to happen, we have to get step one done.  As our 90 day countdown begins we are left with a lot of responsibility.  We not only have a ton of paperwork to complete, we have a ton of money to raise.  This is something that we cannot do on our own, as it is literally my entire yearly salary to pay for this adoption.  Gretchen is starting a home based business to help raise funds, which our prayer is that it will generate a significant amount of income (isn't that everyone's prayer?).  On top of that, we would love if our friends and family (really anyone else, too) would join us and help raise these funds.  If you would like to give, please click  here.  You could also share this link with all of your fiends, as they may be looking for some way to help out.

If you cannot help financially, we understand!  But there is something that you could do.  Prayer is an amazingly powerful tool that we have, and we would love if you would pray for us.  Not only pray for this adoption, but also pray for our kids that are not home with us yet.  We need this entire process to be covered in prayer, and each of you can help with that.

I leave you with a picture of our family.  Imagine how this photo will look with four beautiful Filipino faces in there with us.  You can help bring our kids home.