Great visit!

We had a wonderful visit with our new social worker on Saturday!  Her name is Jodie and she is such a joy to share this process with.  It was a special blessing to be able to talk about the Lord with her have her reciprocate and share the same heart for the Lord.  We did the home inspection on this first visit and will do the individual interviews on the next visit.  The second visit has not been scheduled yet, but should be soon.

On a funny note, we told the children that the social worker was coming to visit.  They were so excited to meet her and kept asking when she would arrive.  One of these times Lana asked 'So when is the working girl coming to our house?'  Gary and I looked at each other, stifled a laugh, and explained that she is a SOCIAL worker and her name is Miss Jodie.

Home visit

Tomorrow will be our first home visit with our new social worker.  This is not a fearful experience like it was the first time we had a home inspection, in fact we are looking forward to meeting our new social worker.  This time around we are working with a wonderful Christian agency which is such a blessing. 

Please keep praying for wisdom and patience.  We are waiting for more information on a couple little boys and I find myself checking email many times a day hoping for some news.  I remind myself that God has a plan for each one of these little guys.  Even if none of the precious children I have seen so far will be our son I am grateful to have the opportunity to be praying.

Homestudy

We are just now signing with a local Christian agency to do our homestudy.  It is TOO exciting to be moving forward!  They have worked with our adoption agency, Lifeline, before and we are pleased to be able to go through this process with a social worker who has been highly recommended by Lifeline.  For the next few days we will be filling out more paperwork just to begin the homestudy, then we can go ahead and schedule the first home visit.  At the same time are doing some of the required reading.  One of the books is called 'The Connected Child' and I really wish we had read this book before bringing Kayla home, a very practical, helpful read.  The other book is called 'Adoption Parenting' which we read during our last homestudy.  This book is a great all around adoption resource, almost like a manual.  It is huge and has categories on sleep, attachment, language, food, siblings, etc.. as well as many health, and emotional issues orphanage children may experience.  We have learned so much through parenting Kayla, but we want to be as prepared as we possibly can for our new little guy and are grateful for the opportunity to read.

Next stage - getting busy!

We are now in the process of choosing a local agency to do our homestudy.  This should take 2-4 months to complete.  This will involve lots of paperwork, home visits, background checks, fingerprinting, as well as required reading and online classes.  The next few months we will be filling most of our free time with completing all of these requirements.

This process will be different from the process to adopt Kayla.  One of the ways this will be different is that we will be able to choose a child from a Bulgarian waiting children's list at any time during this process.  I find myself having to fight feelings of urgency to choose a child (there are not very many little boys available with the more minor special needs), guilt when I see some of the severely sick children we are not in a place to consider, and also fear that we will not know which child to say 'yes' to.  Please pray specifically that God will give us grace to wait if need be, as well as wisdom and peace when we do choose a child.

Bulgaria Adoption

So here we are again, starting another exciting adoption!  We have chosen to go with the country of Bulgaria; this is where God keeps directing our hearts.  There is great need for children with disabilities to be adopted and we are requesting a little boy, age 0-3, with minor/moderate special needs.  We will be looking at waiting children’s lists and praying that the Lord would grant us much wisdom as we wait and eventually choose a little boy.  The timeline is approximately anywhere from 10 months to 18 months.

Many of you know of the difficult adjustment Kayla has had, although we have not shared most of it on our blog.  Who could have imagined that a child so young, 9 months old when we brought her home, could have already been so deeply broken?  Rage, tantrums, defiance, and frustration characterized her for much of the first year after she joined our family.  There was very little progress with attachment and Kayla alternated from cold distancing to scratching and hitting during most interactions with either parent.  During one of her tantrums, I took her raging, angry little body into the other room and sat down with her.  I looked into her face and knew that she thought mommy was simply being mean.  My heart ached, and I realized she had no concept of how deeply I love her and desired her best.  I was reminded that it is with that kind of love that God loves us, only it is even deeper and perfect.  All I could do is tell her I love her.  With much love and prayer we have seen her grow into a delightful, happy little girl.  She still has a will of iron and has a quick temper, but these no longer define her or run her life.  Kayla has fully attached and runs to me for hugs, and every day, many times a day, tells me that she loves me.  We are coming up on 2 years with our little Kayla and thank God daily for the healing and wholeness that we are seeing in her life.

I mention Kayla’s story to explain what has brought us to the place of adopting again.  It breaks my heart when I think of what institutionalized children experience and what little hope they are given.  Our desire is to bring home a child that needs a family, a child that can grow up learning about the Lord and be loved.  Please pray for us as we continue down this road.  There is risk in what we are doing, and there will be difficult days ahead, but the desire of our hearts is to rescue and love a needy child.

Changes

We're tweaking the blog a little. Notice anything different in the Title?