More News from Last Week!

I’m home with a sick one today, so while he relaxes with Veggie Tales, I thought I’d continue on about my astounding phone conversation with our agency Director last week.

Continuing from my previous post, the phone conversation I had with our agency director last week went on to talk about all that we’d need to do to update our home study. That, in fact, should be just an update and not a full re-write because our agency had us write our home study as if Nepal were a Hague Country (like China). Now, we may have to spend some money and re-order documents like marriage and birth certificates, state background checks, etc., but those fees would be nominal and we have enough to cover those. Our agency Director will be in contact with our Nebraska social worker to ensure that we don’t have to pay for a full re-write of the home study!

Our agency estimated that the paperwork would only take us about 3-4 months to complete and we’ll be paper-ready for China! That’s still surprisingly long in my opinion, but what will take the longest is the immigration change from Nepal to China. We can never count on our own government to make haste! Plus, China requires 4 visits with our social worker, not 2 like Nepal did. So, that’s time for our social worker who works out of Omaha and she'll have to make 4 trips out here to meet with us. I’ve been in contact with her via email and she is working through the details with our agency first, before scheduling our 4 appointments.

There is something of concern to our Director and that is our openness to special needs. We filled out a “Match Form” for our agency months ago, back when Nepal was still in the works. This Match Form was a series of check boxes of all the special medical needs our family is open to accepting. Our agency looked at our form and said they’d never seen a family so open to such a high number of special needs. And believe me, we're not open to everything!  She told me that this almost worried her because she wondered if we really knew what we were doing. In fact, she said the problem wouldn’t be how long we’d be waiting for a referral, but how quickly we’d get one! She felt we might not be ready for travel and for an addition to the family so quickly! Indeed we do know what we are doing, however with Jay’s pending back surgery (still not scheduled yet because the steroid shot is still working), perhaps we will take a glance at our Match Form and make a few edits, just simply to keep the medical bills manageable for Jay’s back and our daughter who might require medical attention upon coming home to our family.

In the meantime, some of you family and friends might have questions or even concerns for us about adopting special needs. This week I came across a great video from a wonderful organization that explains it better than I ever could. Click here to watch a 10-minute clip from Love Without Boundaries and learn about special needs adoptions!