Steps In This Journey

I haven't been updating our adoption progress much because sometimes it seems like we just aren't making any progress. It's rather annoying really. I've really begun to believe that as soon as God's people step out to adopt a child the devil gets on the move to throw as many kinks in the process as he can. That just tells me even more that adoption is close to the Father's heart. Why else would Satan try so hard to sabotage them? I know of many families that have had flooding occur in their homes, appliances break down, cars break down....the list goes on and on. These things are just minor setbacks in the big picture of our journey's.

For us personally we've had some setbacks in the form of cars that break down and tickets that Rick and I both got within DAYS of each other. OY! We are also STILL not done with our homestudy. This is really frustrating to me. I didn't realize that we had to pay the entire fee before we could even have our first visit from our SW. This wouldn't have been a problem if the tickets and repairs hadn't taken part of the money that we were planning to use for the HS in the first place. Then, I found out that we also couldn't be seen until we have our Education requirements done. And just today found I out that on top of the DVDs they send us for our Ed requirements we also are required to attend Webinars presented by the agency. I just keep reminding myself that we are doing this because we wanted to have a friend of mine's sister do our HS. I know she is looking forward to meeting with us and I don't have to worry that it will end up like it did with our last adoption Homestudy SW. We have had enough experiences from foster care and other areas to really not trust Social Workers and the power they have, so if I have to jump through hoops in order to work with someone I can trust I will. I'm hopeful that we will soon be able to pay the last $500 we owe, get these Ed requirements behind us and have this HS done before the summer is over.

The other issue we are facing right now is with a piece of our Dossier paperwork. It's just a form letter from the local Commissioner of Revenue that states we have lived in our house *blank*, our house is *blank* total square feet and *blank* livable square feet, it has so many bedrooms and so many bathrooms. Easy right? The Commish should have all this info in her office already all she needs to do is type it into the document I emailed to her, print it on office letterhead, have it notarized, and let me know I can come pick it up. Unfortunately, she had a problem with this and called the COUNTY ATTORNEY to ask her advice on what to do! I have gone around and around with her, the County Assistant Admin, and the County Attorney for about two weeks now. I finally got them to tell me what the issue is and apparently she doesn't want to sign off on something she has no way of knowing. But wait, this is all public record and she's the Commish of Revenue. She SHOULD know all this, right? She says that she can't say how long we have lived in the house because maybe we haven't lived in the entire time we've owned it. Because we're multi-millionaires who have houses all over the globe you know! When we said we'd get letters from our neighbors for proof she said that would only show that she has been TOLD we've lived here that long! And she also doesn't want to sign off on how much of the total square space is livable. Umm, ok. How many 3BR, 1 1/2 bath, one story houses have a WHOLE TON of non-livable space?! We do have a porch that has it's own amount of square space, but it's clearly listed on her own appraisal sheet.I just need to remember to pray for patience in this one. We are trying to come to a solution that will work for everyone, but I am really hoping we don't have to pay someone to come out and do an appraisal just to prove to her how much living space we have.

We are making progress though. Because our HS is taking so long I went ahead and started gathering Dossier documents. We have a few of those down and I think the ones that are left are the easier ones to get. I also went ahead and sent in the
I600A and our fingerprint appointment is July 16th! YAY!! Never thought I'd be excited about having my fingerprints done, but I definitely am about these. I'm hopeful that once our HS gets there it won't be long before we have our approval. We've decided that we are going to take a loan from Rick's 401K to cover whatever costs we still need once it's time for us to travel. We're still hopeful that that amount will be very small or we won't have to go that route at all, but it's good to know it's there if we need to use it.

So that's where we are right now. Sometimes it seems like we take three steps back for every one forward but we are getting there. And most important of all we're not giving up!