The Adoption Process

As Ryan and I have begun to tell people that we are adopting, lots of questions are always asked.  So, here's a breakdown of the most popular.  :)

Q:  How did you decide to adopt?
A:  I don't mean to be evasive with the very first Q and A but that is a long story of how God worked in our hearts and lives.  I'll describe that later in it's own post.  I can say, briefly, that He has guided us and called us on this journey for our family and we are so excited to expand our family through adoption.

Q:  Where are you adopting from?
A:  Ethiopia

Q:  Just one child?
A:  Actually, we feel like God has placed two children on our hearts.  However, we continually are praying and asking God for His guidance as we decide on adopting one or two children.  We are open to either - whatever He wants for us.

Q:  Boy or girl?
A:  We are thinking we would like to bring at least one girl into our family, but again, really trying to stay open to what the Lord has for us.

Q:  What age are you hoping for?
A:  I don't mean to sound like a broken record repeating myself, but we continue to pray through the age of the kids as well.  Right now, we have the age range to 0-4.  That means that we could get a one and a four year old....or a two year old and a three year old.... or an infant and a four year old.  We just have an age range that we tell the adoption agency we are open to.

Q: What does the process look like?
A:  This is a long answer but I'll try to keep it concise.  There are three main phases of the paperwork process.  We are in the first phase (Home Study).

Paperwork Process:

1.  Home Study - background checks, medical check-ups, several references, financial information as well as personal visit with our caseworker and several reading assignments (online training or books on adoption).

2.  USCIS - this is a packet of documents that needs to be submitted to the US government to meet US requirements.  This includes things such as birth certificates, marriage certificate and a copy of the entire home study (everything that our case worked compiled on us in the Home Study).

3.  Dossier - another packet of documents that meet Ethiopian country requirements.  This includes notarized copies of various official documents, reference letters, health certificates, etc.

After each document packet is submitted to it's respective country, they each take a certain, unknown amount of time to be approved or get the appropriate paperwork back to move forward.  I think a reasonable amount of time to anticipate these first three things taking place would be 3-5 months.  I will keep this blog updated as to where we are specifically on the right hand column.  :)

After all of the paperwork is done, we get on a referral list.  As children become available for adoption, they are referred to the families on the top of the list.  So, as children are referred, our family moves up the list.  This is also a very unknown time frame with so many factors contributing.  A reasonable guess would be 12 - 18 months after the paperwork is all submitted.  Of course, we would love to have it move faster than this, but we have no control over it and need to be patient as we wait.

And now for the last question:

Q:  What do your kids think about adopting?
A:  . . . to be answered in the next post  :)