A lot of these updates would overlap, but if you're interested in joining a private group we established on Facebook, just send us a note, and we will invite or RE-invite* you to that group.
Sometimes FB group invitations are hard to find, there are so many! *Chances are, we've already tried to add you, but the invitation got buried and expired already. Just let us know.
We completed some of our prospective adoptive parent training way back in April 2020, but with all the developments that have prolonged our adoption journey these past two years, we find ourselves wrapping up the remaining training hours (finally!) only just this week.
Our pups have been getting an earful! They're basically auditing the classes; but we don't make them take the quizzes. 🎧🎈🤟🏽
Several of you have asked us on our private Facebook group page* or elsewhere what are our next steps now that the in-home / in-person home study visit is behind us. Good question!
As our social worker prepares our home study, we are currently gathering a few remaining outstanding documents and wrapping up some tasks.
Before the home study document is finalized and approvable, we would have to determine solidly whether we should stick to our current country program (as we'd strongly prefer to do) or switch our focus to another country program in this region. If you're curious about what all goes into the thought process, we would be glad to discuss more at length privately as schedules permit.
Like that of most prospective adoptive parents' journey, ours has been full of twists and turns. And, just the fact that our backgrounds and priorities and faith have prepared us well to field the twists and turns doesn't mean that we love all the unknowns and setbacks they cause.
We do desire to see this process all the way through and to have the privilege of bringing children into our home--and we're trusting that even delays and hardships and unexpected hurdles can be redemptive and used to unite us with exactly the right children for us, in exactly the right timing.
* If you're not part of the private FB group and would like to be, please message Joy on Facebook or email [email protected] for an invitation link.
Last night, our social worker finally made it to our home...from Europe via Armenia to us! Although the flight was delayed, we were still able to spend a few hours together getting acquainted and talking about life and family (and, of course, adoption).
It was after dark by the time we were able to meet up. I took this photo of our house so the social worker could get a better idea what it looks like in the daylight! (Don't mind that small mountain of construction rubble near the stairs; the man we hired to clean up the debris hasn't been able to get to our place lately due to holidays and lots of rainy weekends. It will be removed soon.)
Thanks to so many of you who have been lifting us up in various ways during this process. The social worker couldn't make any promises, but the plan is to finish up our home study much sooner than we had been expecting! So we're trusting in God's perfect timing, and we'll wait to see how things unfold in the coming weeks and months.
Thanks for your patience! We've had a great experience with our agency and with the cooperative agency that's helping us execute our home study overseas.
It's we who have extended our adoption process, partly due to our efforts to buy a house as foreigners. (Cv-19 didn't exactly accelerate our adoption process, either!)
Our new-to-us fixer-upper home has now been renovated at least to a "safe and healthy environment" level, and we will be welcoming a US-licensed social worker to inspect our home and interview us in-person on May 17th.
We believe we have what we need financially to move forward with this next step in our adoption process--thanks to praying/supportive loved ones and generous donors.
