I must admit I'm a little embarrassed at how far behind I am at telling W's adoption story. This is my attempt to catch everyone up on the last 3+ months (eek!) because SO MUCH has happened!
By the way, I have added several dates so that other Haiti adoptive families can get an idea of our timeframe (yeah, I do that comparison thing too.. ;-)). I have also divided the post with topic headings,,,if you prefer to skip to the juicy parts! ha!
The Home Study process begins...
In mid-April we got into contact with our home study social worker - a wonderful local lady who we've used for several home studies and home study updates. On May 3rd my hubby, Eric, and I had our first official meeting in her office to discuss how to proceed and to set a goal for completing the home study. Our goal? May 31st. Because our family was scheduled to be out of town the first two weeks of June, we hoped to have our notarized home study document in-hand before we left for our trip. This was going to be a challenge. I should add...there was a bigger reason for rushing to get our home study finished. The notarized home study would be emailed to the crèche in Haiti where W lives. It would be reviewed by the director / adoption staff. If it met their approval, they would officially match our family to W and send us adoption contracts to sign!! And the sooner we got that done, the sooner we could complete our dossier for the Haitian government to review and *Officially Match* us to W.
So began a flurry of collecting documents, filling out forms, having meetings, getting exams, visiting the notary, visiting FedEx, driving all around our city with 2 kiddos, collecting more documents, etc. The checklist was 2 pages long!! Fortunately many of the documents would also be used in our dossier. On May 29th our social worker came to our home for the final interview and home inspection. This was painless, enjoyable actually, since we know and love her well. By the end of that week, we had submitted to her every item on the checklist. Woohoo! We didn't quite meet the goal of having it written, but now she could do that while we were out of town. We could email revisions and corrections back and forth with her and our adoption agency worker to come up with a completed home study.
Home Study or Comedy of Errors?
For those of you who are just now embarking on your international adoption journey, please don't let me scare you away from diving into the paperwork. Knowing about possible pitfalls will help you immensely in getting your paperwork completed error-free. You can do it! I promise! Those who have already completed an international adoption, you know what I'm talking about! And you look back and chuckle, maybe roll your eyes...now that your child is home. ;-) What am I referring to? Notarized Documents. Getting that Notary Signature and Seal. Official documents going to a foreign country must be notarized in an absolutely precise way, with specific legal language, a commission that won't expire before one year, matching dates, and more. Each document is certified by several levels of government in the U.S. as well as in the foreign country, so precision matters.
Let me give you one example where things can go seriously awry. The Medicals. Oh, those dern' little medical forms--the great hurdle of every repeat international adoptive parent. This document is required for your home study and dossier and gives the foreign government some assurance that you won't suddenly keel over after you bring your kiddo home. So you and your spouse get thoroughly examined by your medical doctor and tested for a multitude of diseases and conditions. You wait for results. You give the doctor 2 forms (for each of you) that he must fill out, sign and notarize. Additionally the doctor writes 2 letters (for each of you) on his letterhead stating you've been tested and examined and are healthy, you are able to raise an adoptive child, blah blah blah...and he signs and notarizes. For Eric and me, this meant our doctor was responsible for 8 documents. In the end, it took several conversations, new forms, and a couple additional visits to the doctor before we had 8 correctly notarized documents in hand. I almost cried with relief and had to purchase an extra box of Clairol Nice n Easy to cover the new gray hairs... ;-)
There were several other blips along "the home study way", but it's all part of the adoptive journey. These little inconveniences mean nothing when you consider that every moment of every step is bringing you closer to a child. A child who will someday be your son.
A Big "Glitch"...
In June something pretty big that happened, unrelated to our adoption, is that my husband donated a kidney to his brother-in-law. The first 2 weeks of June our family was out of town for the surgery and with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. We stayed in a hotel suite together (well the guys spent several days in the hospital and we girls had the suite) and spent precious days together and had wonderful talks and times of connection. When Eric was released to return home, he was on bed rest for a couple weeks. This is the reason we wanted to get the home study completed by the end of May.
While we were gone, we planned on emailing back and forth with our home study social worker and our adoption agency worker to get a finalized version of the home study. We thought this would be fairly low key and not a big deal. We would get the home study finalized, emailed to the crèche and be matched to W. However, a glitch arose 2 days before we left on our trip. We learned that another family with another adoption agency had started to pursue the adoption of W! We had no idea how far along they were in their home study process, so suddenly we found ourselves racing to finish our home study. We were passionately convinced that God had led us to this particular boy and we already felt he was our son. We, with lots of family/friends prayed for God's leading and for His will to be done in this situation. We frantically edited the home study via emails back and forth with our 2 adoption workers. It would have been heart wrenching if we "lost" W, but we trusted God to put W in the family that was of His choosing.
So what happened? We got our home study finalized and submitted to the crèche shortly after we returned from our trip. And a few days later, on our anniversary, we received the official match from the crèche to adopt to W! We received his referral file with photos and the adoption contracts to sign. Best anniversary gift ever! And some other really great news-- the other family is now happily pursuing the adoption of another child, and are thrilled that W has a family too. God took care of it all!!
God Provides...
With this adoption process, as with the others before it, we promised God that we would not borrow money to pay the adoption fees and travel expenses. With W, He gave us an open door to walk through and promised to provide ALL that was needed to bring this little boy home. His faithful provision has been evident in many miraculous ways! God has provided through several means, including creative fundraisers: our puzzle piece fundraiser; an online jewelry auction;
selling Restaurant.com vouchers; Thirty-One totes sales; donation jar at the coffee shop where I work; and a large yard sale at our church. We also had many friends, family members, and even strangers donate to our adoption fund. Some of those were large donations that simply knocked our socks off! We started with an adoption fund that totaled zero, but in 4 months, God provided nearly $11,000 towards our adoption!!!
---Ok wow. That was a looooong post. If you made it this far, I say like we do in the south, "Well bless your little heart!" ;-) I'm pooped out from writing it, and I'm sure your eyes are worn out reading it; thus I will push pause in the story. I will continue the update...with CURRENT ADOPTION NEWS...in my next post!
