Tedious Progress, but ever forward!

Our end of the homestudy paperwork is 99% done, and we received permission Monday to have the social worker who will write our homestudy to proceed! Yeah!! Minutes later an automated email message came in saying that our social worker is out of office until 2/2. And thus the emotional highs and lows of the adoption roller coaster continue!

Our friend’s and family’s reactions continue to be all over the place too :-}. Some are cheering for us, others bluntly tell us we are NUTS! In a down moment, when I was questioning it all myself while Phil was on a business trip out of country for 8 days, he emailed me this:

“Keep walking, we will receive revisions in the plan if and when we need them (Isaiah 30:19-21).
Love Phil”

It’s wonderful to be able to encourage one another in the down moments. We only want God’s Will for our family and for little Yan… it’s the only way this will all work out!

And so we ask continued prayers for this adoption process, and for Yan’s health and physical and emotional safety.

I think I finally understand the basic process of this international adoption. We need Immigration Approval on a piece of paper before we can finish the all important Dossier and send it to China. But we need the finished and approved Homestudy before we can send either off. It’s currently taking Immigration 90-120 days to send out the approval. It’s taking 1-5 months to get Chinese approval once the Dossier is received and logged. And none of these countdowns start until the Homestudy is completed and approved. So specific prayer right now would be a speedy finishing of the Homestudy! I’ll be working to fill out the Immigration paperwork, and gathering all the “fresh” (they even want all new copies of our birth certificates!) documentation for the thick Dossier packet. More paperwork!!