Prayer Request

We are having a HUGE (seriously, I meant GIGANTIC) garage sale to raise more money on April 29^th and 30^th.  For any of you locally, it will be at Jenny’s parent’s house… watch the Carthage Press and Craigslist for ads and come on by!!  For those of you that can’t come, PLEASE join us in prayer for great weather and big crowds.  Thank you!!

Easter = new hope

Happy Easter week everyone!  Not only am I more than happy to have a short work week and fun family gatherings but I love that this time of year, especially Easter, means that hope is renewed.  Just like spring, it is new life after a dark time.  Sam and I are holding on to this hope that God gives us while we wait for our baby.

If any of you are counting along with us, this is WEEK 9.  Last night we had the first session of our home study.  It was brutal!  I think it was worse than the one we had to go through for foster care.  It lasted from 6-8 pm.  We had no idea it would take that long.  It’s hard to understand how draining it is until you yourself have to stand before someone and have your whole life (past, present and future) judged by a total stranger.  (I imagine it will be something like that when we stand before God… minus the stranger part.)  She made us a nervous wreck because, even though she was super nice, she was somewhat unemotional so we couldn’t read her reaction of what she thought of us.  She sat at the table and rattled off questions and typed extremely fast on her laptop and would just nod occasionally.  She also did a full home inspection, i.e. looking in closets, inspecting every room, checking for smoke detectors and fire extinguisher, child-safety lock, etc.  Overall, I think we did ok but it is always a strange experience to be “evaluated” like that. 

She said it will take approximately 2 weeks to type up her draft of the home study, then we wait for our state highway patrol background checks and then she comes out for a 2nd visit in which she will do another evaluation and have us sign the paperwork.

I guess it makes us feel good just to know we're doing something to help the process along...

A Reason for Everything -

So in the last post I made, I mentioned that we had just found out that we had to have our home study completed ASAP.  There is a pretty neat story about this… it’ll give you a little glimpse of God’s timing:

Most of you know that I work for Human Resources at a huge company.  Early last week, one of our employees received a random letter from a company asking for our business to use their services.  One of their services happened to be home study preparation.  The employee that received this letter knew of our pending adoption and forwarded the letter to me saying “I know the business won’t need this, but didn’t know if you’d be interested or not.”  To make matters even more interesting, the lady that sent the letter asking for our business used to work in a neighboring county’s foster care system.  The “coincidence” of this is almost unbelievable!  We contacted her immediately and started the process needed.  Due to her background in both foster care and legal law, she is knowledgeable in how to transfer our foster home study to a state-approved home study in order to make the process much quicker and much cheaper.  We have almost all of the paperwork already completed since we were licensed as foster parents less than a year ago.  By law, Tara (our home study specialist) has to visit our home and “interview” us two times before we can have the documentation finalized.  Our first visit will be this coming Monday, April 18th @ 6 pm.

We also received an update from our Adoption Coordinator this weekend.  Here is her email:

Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 22:54:55 -0400
Hey Jenny :)
Your profile is showing so well. We normally do not tell you every time your profile is being considered- as it does hurt to not be chosen.  So I will not tell you every time, unless we need your approval of a situation.  We have had great feedback on you guys though :)
Have a Super Weekend!
Ashlene

While we wait…

Yesterday was the end of Week 7, since our profiles were first placed online on February 18^th.  If God is trying to teach Sam and I patience, we are failing BIG TIME ‘cause He keeps giving us more and more opportunity to wait.  Believe it or not, Sam is becoming as impatient as I am, and that is staying something because he is usually the one keeping me in check!  I am one of those people that has to keep myself busy, preoccupied and “doing something to help” while I wait.  I am constantly checking websites (I think I may have been the majority of the “viewers” of this blog… ha ha), reading our profile, etc.  Just this week, I received information from our attorney that she suggests we go ahead and complete our home study evaluation now, instead of later, due to some new information from the courts stating that a transfer of custody could not happen until our study was finalized.  If we were to be matched, and it be a quick process, we don’t want to be stuck saying “if only we’d completed that sooner…” so, now I am focusing on getting that particular paperwork process underway.

I was reading another adoptive parent’s blog today and she had a YouTube video of a song that is the perfect “Adoption Song”.  I wish I was able to get the video uploaded for you all to hear (I can’t figure out how) but I have listed the lyrics below.  It is a gorgeous song, so if you have time, please do Google it and listen to it.  It is the cry of our hearts…

While I’m Waiting by John Waller

I'm waiting
I'm waiting on You, Lord
And I am hopeful
I'm waiting on You, Lord
Though it is painful
But patiently, I will wait

I will move ahead, bold and confident

Taking every step in obedience
While I'm waiting
I will serve You
While I'm waiting
I will worship
While I'm waiting
I will not faint
I'll be running the race
Even while I wait

I'm waiting
I'm waiting on You, Lord
And I am peaceful
I'm waiting on You, Lord
Though it's not easy
But faithfully, I will wait
Yes, I will wait
I will serve You while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting
I will serve You while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting
I will serve you while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting on You, Lord