As many of you may have already known, we had our third home study visit last night. This visit was a little different from the first two because our social worker had to speak with us individually. The reason our agency does this is so they can hear first hand from both Nic and I our individual motives for adopting and get more information one on one about us pertaining to our family background and dynamic, our childhood, and the views of our friends and family about our adoption, ect. When she was done getting all the additional information she needed from us individually, she asked us a few questions as a couple. After we finished our session, we scheduled to meet for our fourth and final visit next Monday. At our final visit we will go over the report she wrote about us to verify that everything is accurate. In addition to going over her report, she will also have a list of final questions that we must answer - each country has their own set of questions, so we will be answering the questions predetermined by Ethiopia. After we are done reviewing our home study report and answering the final list of questions our social worker will send out home study to St Elizabeth/Coleman for their international adoption coordinator to review. Once she approves that it meets all the requirements she will forward it to our America World Adoption Coordinator, who will also review the report to ensure we meet Ethiopian standards. Once everyone is satisfied with the home study, it will be printed, signed and notarized.
Once we receive a final copy of our home study, we will send it off to the USCIS (United States Citizen and Immigration Services) along with an I600A. The I600A is an application for "Advance Processing of Orphan Petition"...basically a pre-approval of citizenship for Amira. It is at this point we will also be scheduled for fingerprinting. But before I get too far ahead of myself I am going to stop there. We are taking everything one step at a time so once we send off our I600A and Home study I will update everyone with the details.
On a side note, our adoption agency and home study agency have both commented on how quickly we have provided them with all of our dossier paperwork. We are well on track to have all of our paperwork completed before our December 1st goal. If we have all of our paperwork completed earlier than anticipated and God willing have raised the financial aspect needed to submit our dossier, Nic and I have decided we will submit everything before our December 1st goal. I anticipate that we will have our paperwork completed by mid October - early November at the latest. We are very excited to be on track with everything and it will be a relief to have our dossier submitted and approved. I never imagined that adoption a little girl would be this difficult and time consuming. Paper pregnancy really is more difficult than physical pregnancy. But we know in the end having our precious little girl at home will make this struggle seem like it never happened. Just like when the doctors placed Jaxon and Evelynn in my arms for the first time, it was like the pain I just endured through natural childbirth never happened.
We also have another exciting announcement that we would like to share with everyone. When we first began this process, we specified that we wanted to adopt a little girl between the ages of 1 and 3. However, because of extensive length of time it takes to adopt a child from Ethiopia we decided to take our some what small age gap and broaden it a little in the hopes of minimizing the already long time frame. We have asked our home study to approve us for a child between the age of newborn and 5 years old and we will be submitting an application to Ethiopia for a little girl between the age of newborn and 4 years old. Yes there is a difference in what our home study will read and what we submit to Ethiopia, this allows a little wiggle room for changes. We are excited for what the future has in store for our family.
I know this may not make a lot of sense but Amira is a part of our family. No we do not know what she looks like, no we do not know how old she is, no we do not know anything about her. But we love her so much. We think about her daily. She is just as much part of this family as any of the rest of us. She just isn't physically here yet. I know this is hard to understand because it is easier to understand something when you can physically see it. In a way, our Amira is a lot like having faith. Just like faith, we do not have to see her to know that she exists, we just know that she does exists and that she is out there waiting to be a part of our family. God predestined her to be here and we will stop at nothing to follow through with God's will for our family. God is on our side and we know without a shadow of a doubt this is the path we have been chosen to follow.
...if God is for us, who can be against us
Romans 8:31
We would like to take this time to thank everyone again for their encouragement, support, and prayers. We also want to thank God because without him we would not be where we are today adopting a little girl from Africa. If it were not for him calling us to this path, we would have never even thought of adopting a child. I cannot emphasize enough that this adoption is only possible because of his grace and love. The day our precious girl is officially an Ayres' all the glory be to our Lord because we COULD NOT do this without his strength, guidance, love, grace and mercy.
OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD!!
