Answered Prayer

We've all heard it before. God does answer prayer, but sometimes the answer isn't what we'd hope for. To that, I ask you readers, just what were you praying for this last week anyway?

Last week we had asked for prayers for our home study to be finished and that our social worker would receive Jay's clearance forms from Florida and both of our FBI clearances to be completed. Well, our social worker emailed me this week and asked if she had made the request from FL or if we did. Florida is one state from which she knew she had to request the clearance. The other states we have lived in allowed us to make the request personally. But after waiting for probably a month plus, our social worker found no evidence that she had sent the request to Florida in the first place. Bummer! She apologized profusely and it's all fine and good. No harm done. But she sent us a form to fill out and send down there while she was out on vacation over the weekend. Our request should arrive there early this week and hopefully Jay's clearance will arrive within a week or two. Adoption is long process with bumps and hurdles. This is just the first of many I'm preparing for.

Seeing the End

Last week on September 11 we remembered the fellow Americans we lost. But this year we found a tremendous reason to celebrate with the arrival of our friend's adopted daughter who came home from Ethiopia! Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave, sweet girl! It was an incredible event to witness and we were honored to be allowed to see her when she came off the plane in her daddy's arms. What a vision of God... "a Father to the fatherless."

Seeing the end of the process puts things into perspective and renews our passion for adoption in the midst of paperwork.

We checked more things off our list recently and I haven't written about them -- adoption training courses. We're required to take 2 online courses, totalling about 10 hours of training. Our agency also shipped us a huge file of about 55 articles that they required us to read. Some of the courses and articles would scare anyone with casual interest in adoption. Titles such as Reactive Attachment Disorder, Hepatitis and Other Communicable Diseases, and You're Not My Real Mother, are tough to swallow. The learning is helpful and I'm grateful for it. It gives us more to pray for and more to be prepared for on this adventure. But it does not scare us away! This is the path God has us on and we'll follow Him to the end.

This week we'll put paperwork on hold as we celebrate C's 6th birthday. We'll celebrate at home on his big day and he'll have a party with 8 boys from school and church on Saturday out at a local indoor playpark. We also have his school carnival/fundraiser on Friday night. So, we're a little swamped this week!

Next week we'll send our passports off for renewal and we'll order the final birth certificates and marriage certificates. Once we're done with those things, we won't be done with the dossier per se, but the things we'll be waiting for will be out of our control, so we'll just wait until everything slowly comes in.

One way you could pray for us this week is that our home study social worker would receive Jay's police clearances from the State of Florida. She is also still waiting for our FBI clearances to arrive and she mentioned that those have been backed up for quite some time. So, we'd like to see those come in this week so that the home study can be officially behind us and added to our dossier.

Thanks for checking in and have a great week!

What's in our Dossier - Part One

We had a big accomplishment this week. We finished part 1 of 3 for our Nepal Dossier!

A dossier is a “country application” that consists of all the documents we need in order to adopt a child. Ours comes in the 3 basic parts: Certified Documents, Notarized Documents, and Non-notarized Documents. To a lot of families adopting internationally, the dossier is overwhelming. But if any of you know me, you know that I’m super-detailed, organized and have Administration as one of my top Spiritual Gifts. So, the dossier is not a big deal for me. In fact, if I really sat down to do it, I believe I could have it all done in a month! But I have more to do in life than work on adoption paperwork! And we have a ton of time since our dossier will not even be sent to Nepal until December or January.

Our home study also needs some of the same documents needed for the dossier. So, as we check items off 1 list, we’ve been able to cross it off the second list. Most of the things we crossed off both lists fell under the Notarized Documents section of our dossier, so I completed those first. I believe this was the longest, most detailed, crazy part of our application itself. Here’s a list of what we needed to provide:

* 2 Certificates of Financial Status (income, savings, investments, debts, etc.)
* 2 Medical Certificates for each Adopting Parent (we had physicals and were tested for communicable diseases like TB, HIV, etc.)
* 2 Commitment to Post-Placement Letters (stating we’ll report annually on how our adopted daughter is doing)
* 2 Employment Verification Letters (for Jay, but I included 2 so they know about my part-time wedding coordinating)
* 2 Non-Employment Verification Letters (for me since I’m a stay-at-home mom)
* 2 Specific Powers of Attorney to our Agency (granting them the right to act our behalf on the legalities of the adoption)
* 2 Powers of Attorney from Jay and me and vice versa (granting Jay the right to make adoption decisions on my behalf, and vice versa)

Things that we need to include in the list above but are just waiting on are:

* 3 International Adoption Home Studies (our Social Worker should have this done within the month, I expect)
* 2 State Police Clearance Letters for each Adopting Parent (we ordered these and are just awaiting their arrival)

Thank goodness we have a good friend who is a Notary! All the documents above needed her stamp and signature. We’ve kept her busy!

We will send this first packet of dossier documents to our agency on Tuesday. They will review them all and let us know if anything needs to be altered in any way. Please pray that they are all accepted! The only hiccup we could possibly see is the “attestation clause” on our notarized documents. Some documents our agency gave us had such a clause for our Notary. Others did not. We have heard that the state of Nebraska will require attestation clauses, but our agency is in Pennsylvania and they do not require them. We’ll see! At the very least, it will be an easy change to make and we’ll just have to reprint and have things re-signed. But it would be so nice to have things done and done correctly the very first time!

Where Have We Been?

Summer fun has passed and school began this past week. But let's back up. I know it's been a couple weeks since I've posted any adoption updates.

Four weeks ago we had an added member to the family. I babysat a 4 week old baby boy for 8 days and 8 nights. It's a long story that perhaps I will write about later. It was different having a bassinette set up in the master bedroom, getting up for 3:30 a.m. feedings and hearing the cry of a newborn again. But what a sweet little boy! Our boys adored him and were on their best behavior with mommy having her hands quite full! Without divulging any details, please be in prayer over this sweet little "Baby V," as we call him. His future with his mother is uncertain. Pray that God provides for him and that his mother would make a decision that is in his best interest, not hers

August brought our annual trip home to Illinois where we stayed with my mom in Barrington, as always. Jay attended The Leadership Summit at Willow Creek and I enjoyed quality time with my mom. Jay spent the first week with us, then returned to Lincoln, leaving me and the boys an extra week for fun and relaxation. Quality time with my mom is a gift I can never thank Jay enough for! The boys and I cherish it and I know my mom does too!

What's a Home Study?

This was the question Jay kept asking as we started this whole process. Well, yesterday we found out. We had our first interview with our social worker. She came to our home and sat with us in the living room and asked us questions about us, our extended families, why we want to adopt, etc. I was a little surprised that she handed us another stack of paperwork to complete. But it was easy and I have most of it done 24 hours later. Jay needs to do his portion and we have to send quite a few requests for criminal background checks to IL, WI and MN. Yet to complete for the home study will be doctors physicals and FBI fingerprinting. We liked our social worker very much and look forward to another quick (and probably final) meeting this Friday at our house.

It's a busy week in our house with C attending VBS at church, a little baby sitting, a couple of nights out with friends, and another home study meeting. Hope it's a good week for you!

Back into the Swing of Things

We're back from an extended vacation at Jay's mom's place in Hayward, WI. A good time was had by all. It was great to be out on the lake tubing and water skiing.

Feels like we've been gone a whole month with no progress on the adoption front. While we were gone, I became extremely impressed with our agency. When I sent them our application, I wrote a cover letter explaining our July 4 vacation and that it would be nearly impossible to reach us by email. Yet, I did include Jay's email address since he gets all his messages on his cell phone. Sure enough, that little detail in my letter was not overlooked. We received 2 email from our agency just updating us on the Nepal progress. Way to go, staff!

This week we sent in our application for our home study. I had hoped to send this in before vacation, but just couldn't get through all those pages. We will have our first of 2 or 3 interviews with our social worker in the next couple of weeks. I am not worried at all about the home study process, but would appreciate prayers for smooth sailing anyway.

We will begin working on our dossier this week. It doesn't seem nearly as extreme as I once thought it to be, which is a good thing. But I know that it will certainly take time and organization. This week we will also be printing and sending our support letter. If you would like to be sure you are on our mailing list, please email us your address. Let the fundraising begin! Prayers for the financial side of our adoption are always appreciated!

Thanks again for your love and support on this journey to our Nepali daughter!

We're in!


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!