Progress

It has been quite awhile since I have posted, but I wanted to wait until a few things were finished before I gave an update. As I said in my last post, we have now decided to utilize an adoption attorney and get our homestudy done by a social worker without using an agency. So we contacted our social worker and she emailed us a list a questions about us, our home, our family, how we were raised, how we plan on disciplining our children, our marriage, etc. Elias and I both had to fill out these questions and then we sent them back to her before she came to our house. I have to say that her coming to our house was a little nerve racking considering our house is not much to look at on the outside and our dog is not the best with meeting new people since we don't have people over much; by which I actually mean that we don't have people over at all unless our parents come to visit. Needless to say, the week prior to the homestudy visit we deep cleaned our house for the first time in a long time! The visit was scheduled for about a week and a half ago and it went quite well. The majority of the time was spent with the social worker talking about issues that adopted child can face, then individual interviews with a very brief walk though of the house. We certainly wouldn't have had to have cleaned as much as we did, but our house definitely needed it. She said that the study would be complete by the end of this month or the beginning of next. Much to our surprise she sent the first draft (which is 7 pages long) this past weekend! This means that only a few things need to be filled in and tweaked and it will be ready to submit to our attorney and we will be in the waiting phase. I also contacted our attorney today and we will be setting up our first consultation to find out what comes next.

While all of this has been going on we also decided to begin taking foster care classes. As I have said before, we don't know if this is the right choice for us due to the emotional toll that foster care can take, but we figured that it can't hurt to take the classes, keep options open and if nothing else, they will better prepare us for adoption. The series is about 12 weeks long and runs every Tuesday evening from early September to the end of November. So far, they have been good, and we are trying to stay open minded, but we are still in the exploration phase of whether this is right for us or not. Please continue to pray for wisdom for us as we continue to seek what God's plan is for us. Thank you again for all of your love and support!