Well we had our second official home study evaluation last night. We are so glad to have this process underway! In order to meet Ethiopian standards for a home study, we must meet with a social worker on four different occasions. We learned last night that our first "official" meeting was a few weeks ago when we traveled to Indianapolis to meet at St Elizabeth/Coleman's main office. It was at this time we met with one of the international adoption coordinators (who is also a social worker) to go over the process and paperwork of the home study as well as introducing ourselves and giving a glimpse into our lives and our motives for adopting. Our meeting last night was a little different than our first meeting because it was conducted in our home and our children were part of the evaluation.
But before I go into great detail about our meeting last night, let me give a brief summary of what we needed to do before being assigned a social worker from northwest Indiana. The first step of our home study process was the application and acceptance into the home study program, which we passed. The second step was traveling to Indianapolis to meet with the international adoption coordinator at St Elizabeth/Coleman. It was at this time we were given detailed information of the process of our home study, as well as the trials and tribulations of adopting. We were also asked to open up about our lives and share our reasons for adopting. We also were asked to provide a lot of information to the home study agency and sign a lot of paperwork allowing them to do detailed background checks on us. When we left Indianapolis we were given "homework" to do before we could proceed with the process. Some of this homework included a total of around 30 essay questions, going to our police station and having a local background check done on ourselves, providing a detailed financial breakdown of our assets and liabilities, providing reference letters, having health physicals, lots of blood work and tb tests for both us and the kids just to name a few. As you can see, there was a lot of additional paperwork we had to do before we could proceed with our home study and we worked hard to get this completed quickly so we could move forward. But we could not do this alone. I want to first thank The Lord because without his strength we would not be where we are today. I also want to take this time to thank everyone who has helped make this possible, such as our references who had to make several trips to the bank to notarize and re notarize their letters - your efforts in helping us meet Ethiopian standards are much appreciated!!! Also to my sitter, aka mom, who watched Jaxon and Evelynn so we could get all of our extra running around done that was necessary to get the paperwork we needed. We love you very much and appreciate all you do to help us out!!
Once we submitted all the necessary paperwork on our end, the home study agency did a little research of their own, such as criminal background checks and sex offender checks- both of which we obviously had no record. After our social worker had time to review our file, she scheduled an appointment to come to our house. All in all I think we did very well last night. Poor Jaxon had a cold and a tummy ache mixed with the fact he was overtired from our family reunion from the day before so he was a little under the weather. In fact after being put in time out for pushing his sister, he crawled up on the couch and fell asleep. While he slept, Nic, Evy and I spent time in the playroom with our social worker. She asked us a lot of questions about our lives, our children and our motives for adopting. She also presented us with a few questions that we need to pray and consider pertaining to the health of our adoptive daughter. As you may or may not know there are several health issues in Africa that deem a child "undesirable" but are really not a big issue in America because of the advances in health care and technology. We thought we had everything pretty much determined when it came to this topic but it appears there are a lot more out there than what we initially expected. We are asking for your prayers for guidance to help us determine the possibilities we can take on and the route God wants us to go. As always we appreciate your support and prayers.
Our next step in the evening was giving a complete tour of our house to determine if it is child friendly, this was the easiest part. Once we finished our tour, we scheduled our next appointment for the following Monday. At this appointment we will be interviewed individually. Jaxon will also be asked a few questions, but our social worker understands he is pretty young to truly understand what is going on.
Our last appointment will be going over our home study report and making any final changes before it is sent to the international adoption coordinator at St Elizabeth/Coleman who will also review the file and determine anything that needs to be changed or reviewed. The final approval will be done by AWAA. Once everyone agrees we have hit all the main points and it is satisfactory on our end we will be given the official copies. This is a huge step because this means our dossier is almost complete!!!!
Once we are given the final copy I will give details of our final steps in completing our dossier. We are well on track to completing our paper end of our dossier by our December 1st goal. God willing we will also be on track financially to submit our paperwork. All in God's time not ours. Thank you again for all our your support and prayers. We truly appreciate everyone's kind words and encouragement. We will continue to keep you updated on our mission to bring Amira home.
God bless.
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