The Back Story (Part 2)

Okay, I will try to wrap this up with this post since we have discussed nothing but the adoption process here in the last few posts. Then from here, I will just update when things are happening!

After our home study was finished, Devin and I decided that Christmas was a good time to tell everyone in our families about our plans to adopt MF. We talked to my dad and step-mom on Christmas Eve while we were at his house. Everyone was very supportive and excited. The next day, we talked to my mom and step-dad during Christmas at my mom's house. I was honestly most nervous to tell my mom about it, I am not really sure why. My siblings were also there, so they got the news at the same time. Everyone was excited and supportive of us, though of course they had a lot of questions. My mom's main concern was "what happens if you bring her home and she has a lot of health problems and ends up dying??" Well, we know that she does have some health problems and some developmental delays, but that is not any reason to stop us from moving forward. My response was, "What if?" That doesn't change anything for us. Plus, one of the things that I want most for her is to be sealed to our family and whether through life or death, those blessings will be in effect. Of course, they also had questions about the financial aspect of it, because- let's be honest, this isn't going to be cheap.

Let's just discuss the financial end really quick since I am sure that many of you have the same questions. Devin and I are young and he is a full-time student, so we do not have a lot of money just sitting around to use at our disposal. This has honestly been the hardest part of the process for me, because we try to be really conscious of money and any amount of debt scares me. We have worked hard to not have any debt in our marriage, other than our mortgage. We have paid off all student loans and always pay our credit card off monthly. So the idea of an adoption that is likely to cost upwards of $20,000 is not easy to swallow. However- Devin and I feel strongly that we are doing what the Lord has asked us to do and that a way will be opened up for us. Do I expect 20 grand to just drop into our living room one day? No. I do not. We are doing everything we can and already doors seem to be opening for us. There are numerous grants that we can apply for and we are in the process of applying for them all. We are also trying to sell our car so that we can use the proceeds from that toward the adoption as well. Before we even started the process, though, we talked about worst case scenario-taking out a loan to finance the adoption- and we both agreed that while this is not our preferred route, we would do it and feel justified in doing so.

Sometimes I have let the financial aspect scare me so much, I have doubted moving forward. I remember a night not too long ago when I was worried about this very thing and I was crying to Devin about it. He is so level headed and rational, which is great because it balances out a bit of my drama! He just asked me how I would feel standing at Judgement Day and being asked why we did not bring this little girl into our family when we had had clear answers telling us it was the right thing. He told me that telling the Lord the reason we didn't do it was because of "money" sounded a little silly. Yes, I agree. That does sound a little bit silly. Money is such a worldly thing and family relationships are eternal.

Anyway- now that we have that cleared up, let's continue. (I am sorry I am so long winded sometimes!) After Christmas, we made it a goal to finish our adoption training so that we could go to the next step in the process. The training entailed online slide shows with bullet points talking about various things. I found it to be not very useful- but maybe that is because I work in this field and have attended our adoption training classes, which are really well put together and well thought out, in my opinion. However, the training was required, along with homework questions after every section. The homework was even worse than the trainings...it is probably a good thing I am good at making up good sounding answers, eh? It probably took about 15 hours total to complete the homework and trainings, which then had to be sent to our home study agency to be added to our home study writeup.

The match was made shortly thereafter through the agency Joshua Tree. They had MF's information and can match her here versus Ecuador (where most matches are made) because she was on the Waiting Child List and has special needs. So much easier than I anticipated!

So from here- Joshua Tree sent us an official "acceptance letter" in Spanish, which is sent to the Ecuadorian government telling them that we accept MF's match and we are willing to proceed to adopt her. We are supposed to be working on what is called an i-800a form through the US government which authorizes us to get a visa for her and to return to the country with her when the time comes. This form takes about 8 weeks to process, generally. However, we have decided not to do this step until we have had our son, since any major life event (birth of a child included) means the form needs to be amended and re-submitted. It only costs $800 each time...so we figure we will only do it once. :) In the meantime, we will continue to apply for all the grants possible and work on documents for our dossier.

I am still not completely sure of all the steps in the process, but I know that much. Once those documents are complete, we can plan travel time to go pick up MF! The time frame can totally vary, but we could be there for 5 weeks plus.

Alright- sorry about this huge beast of a post. This probably doesn't interest anyone but me. :) But I do want to have a record of the process and to share it with those who are interested, so killing two birds with one stone by blogging it. We are feeling very blessed and very happy with how everything is going.

Thank you all for all of your support and prayers.

(my note: I took out a huge chunk of this post that detailed the matching process. So, if you are wondering where all the details went...yeah...you aren't going crazy.)