On Wednesday this last week, I Fedexed our adoption application to our agency. On Thursday at 4:30 p.m. I got the email of acceptance. That was fast!
This week we need to send in our USCIS application, allowing our goverment to approve us to adopt a foreign born child. I'm sure that won't be approved within 24 hours!!! We also received documents to start working on our dossier that will get sent to Nepal in December or January. Also upcoming will be the home study. I am thankful that we get to use anyone we choose for our home study since we received a wonderful referral from our friends who adopted from Ethiopia last year and loved their social worker. Any more questions out there about our adoption...
Why Nepal?
This was the harder decision! We were drawn to Asian countries first. But we didn’t meet all the qualifications for some countries and waiting lists for infant girls are long and we seemed to hit many roadblocks. So…
Africa, specifically Ethiopia was certainly an option for us! But for some reason that I cannot quite wrap my head around even yet, I just cannot see us going to Africa. I’m not drawn there. Odd. Maybe one day I’ll know why. Then…
That led us to Nepal. One of the guidelines for Nepal adoptions is that if an adoptive family has children of all 1 gender, as we do with 2 boys, we would only be eligible to adopt a girl. We have friends currently on the waiting list for their Nepal adoption and are just waiting to be matched to their daughter. The statistics alone were enough to make us want to reach out. There are over 1 million orphans in the country! More than half the Nepali population lives on less than 60 cents per day! Eighty-five percent of the population is illiterate. More than 10 children die every hour due to malnutrition and disease. And if a young girl does survive long enough, the chances of her being sold to India for human trafficking is high!
While I was a bit upset that Asia wouldn't really be an option for us, it was Jay who found out that Nepal would be a possibility. Once we learned about the programs available to us, we felt like this is where we should go.
That's it for now. We just got back from camping and I have 2 very dirty boys to clean up before running off to t-ball.
Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there! Hope it's a wonderful day!
