Wow, what a week! Can't believe it has been four days since I've slept in my own bed. I am happy to report that Jolene is finally out of the hospital and her hand is healing nicely, but I am SO behind on all I need to be doing at home. Ugh!
That said, however, I am happy to report that despite the detour to the emergency room and pediatric ward we made progress on Jack's adoption this week. One of the biggest hurdles for any adoption is the home study. For those unfamiliar, this is a document created by a licensed social worker to provide an "overall summary" of our lives. It contains all sorts of information from family history to health reports, employment and salary information, introductions of children in the home, a description of living conditions, etc. Basically everything anyone would ever want to know about any part of our lives all wrapped up in a notarized legal document. In other words, lots of fun. Ha!
Well, in order to help the social worker construct this important piece of literature we have to jump through a lot of hoops and gather a lot of information - and that is where we made a lot of progress this week. I spent last week getting things organized, and on Monday my mother was gracious enough to hang out with Jolene at the hospital while Dan and I visited our friendly local notary - a woman who knows us well by now. This venture out also allowed me the time to ready several things for mailing which my father was gracious enough to deliver to the post office for us. In all, we were able to mail off three sets of finger print cards - one set for police reports, one set of the Maryland child abuse registry, and one set for the FBI child abuse registry. We also over-nighted a large packet of paperwork to our home study agency, American World Adoption, which included job letters, a financial statement, California child abuse registry forms, fire inspection approval, a sanitation inspection form, and the final $800 we owed them thanks to our bake sale success and the generous donations of friends and family. Thanks again if you were willing to buy me lunch for this. :)
At this point we are still waiting for a few of our "sent out" forms to be returned to us, but we should be able to move on to the much needed social worker visits required. We will have to have a total of four visits, one of which we completed by attending our orientation meeting a couple weeks ago. Please pray that America World will quickly match us with a social worker and that this social worker will join us in our desire to move forward as quickly as possible. As we already have our pre-approval from China, our timeline for bringing Jack home is very much dependent on the amount of time it takes for our home study to be completed. We still have to jump through the dossier hoops (putting together even more paperwork for actual submission to China), but the home study is the most involved piece of the puzzle.
So, for now, we wait. Sigh. And we pray. Hurray! I still find myself daily awestruck by the way God's hand has moved this process right along. To think, just two months ago today I was sitting in China looking at a little boy in a far away orphanage with no idea that he would forever be in my heart as my son. Now, that same little boy is "officially" matched to our family, has planted himself in our hearts, and has his picture hanging on the front of my microwave oven. What a truly fantastic story of Jesus' love for us and for Jack. Thank you again to all who are supporting us, lifting us up in prayer, and following along with us on this journey. Tomorrow we shall continue on it!
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