We had our second and final (pre-adoption) home visit with our social worker last weekend! We finished up our individual and couple interviews and now just wait for the home study report to be written. We will hopefully have a completed draft by the beginning of next month at the latest! If everything from here on were to go as planned, we are probably seven months away from traveling to Ukraine. We know delays are common with international adoption, so we are also trying to mentally prepare for all of the bumps in the road we may encounter. Our best case scenario would be to receive our travel invitation for six weeks prior to the end of the school year. This would allow us to use the maximum amount of adoption leave for everything in country AND have the whole summer for bonding time at home. That is our hope and prayer, but we know we still have many hoops and hurdles to get through first.
We also have an amazing story to share: In our last post we shared how we were still quite a ways from having what we needed to make the next payment once our home study is complete. About a week after posting that we received an unexpected check in the mail for the balance of what was left in our escrow account after moving. The amount of the check gave us MORE than what we need for our next payment! We never remember ever having that much in our escrow account (let alone thinking we would be getting a check for it) and we were completely shocked, but once again blessed to be reminded of God's faithfulness and our calling to this journey, even when it seems difficult. We had read stories from other adoptive families about how an unexpected check would seem to just appear in the mailbox when they needed it most, but we always kind of dismissed it, thinking that would never happen to us because who would ever send us a check unexpectedly? Well. apparently the mortgage company! We still have a long ways to go financially, but we know everything will fall into place in perfect time. God seems to remind us of that at all the right moments.
If you have not had a chance to sign the petition at saveadoptions.org please do it now!! The Department of State is working on pushing through some very concerning proposals regarding international adoption, some of which have the potential to even disrupt our adoption. So please, please sign it! If you are willing, please also write a simple note to your senators and representatives asking them to NOT support these proposals, due to the fact that they will make international adoption much more time consuming and expensive- two things that it already is!
