We had our home study visits on October 4th and October 7th. The home study is the process where our social worker (assigned to us by our agency’s local partner organization Lutheran Social Services) comes to our home to see our house and interview us. We had to submit a bunch of paperwork in advance of this visit so she could get to know us beforehand – things about our childhood, marriage and parenting philosophies. She checked our home to ensure it was safe and suitable for a child and saw a few child-proofing issues we needed to fix.
She also interviewed Brian and I together and
separately. She asked incredibly
personal questions about our families, our marriage, how we parent, our growing
up years, and any and all difficult events in our life. Honestly, I didn’t love it. We are not used to having our whole lives
scrutinized and questioned. It felt like
we had to reach perfection and we were far from it. As many of you know, we have experienced some
traumatic events over the past several years and this can be alarming for an
adoption agency because they want to ensure we have adequately dealt with those
issues before bringing an adopted child into our home. At the end of our meeting, I reminded our
social worker that we felt we were better equipped for adopting a child because of our past experiences, not in
spite of them.
3 We
can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they
help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance
develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of
salvation. 5 And this hope will not lead to
disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us
the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. - Romans 5:3-5
She has met so many families and heard so many stories; this
truth is not new to her. We remind
ourselves that her job is to ensure that children are placed in the best
possible homes. Homes where they are safe,
loved and respected. Her questions (they
are required by China, she didn’t just make them up) are to determine our
motivations for adopting, the strength of our marriage as well as our strength
of character. There are too many stories
of children being adopted internationally that are then abused, killed, or
forced into slavery or human trafficking.
Too many more of these and countries could decide to no longer allow
international adoptions so it is very important, for many reasons, that
families who want to adopt are thoroughly vetted. We understand this and want to do whatever it
takes to bring our child home – no matter how uncomfortable the process may
sometimes be.
The next step in the home visit process after the visits
themselves is the write up. Our social
worker will write up the information she heard from us into a formal report and
provide her approval for us to adopt including what ages of child we are
approved for, what special needs, etc.
This report is required to apply for the US government approval for us
to adopt internationally (called the I800a).
We turned in all of our paperwork for our dossier (adoption paperwork
packet) two weeks ago to our agency and will add the home study and the I800a to
our dossier when we receive them. Then
we wait until Brian turns 30 so we can submit our entire package of documents
to China to receive their approval for us to adopt. After that happens, we will be officially
logged into the country to adopt and can start receiving referrals!!
Saturday, October 5th was a training day provided
to us by our agency partner LSS. In
order to adopt from China, we need 12 hours of training and this course
provided us with 10 hours. What a long
day! It went over topics from attaching
to your child, to developmental delays and medical concerns, to how to
incorporate and respect your child’s culture.
This is a very important topic and one Brian and I are learning more and
more about. Chinese culture will become
a part of who we are as a family. I am
excited to learn more about Chinese traditions and celebrations so we can bring
these into the traditions of our family.
We must remember that our child will have two cultures – the one they
were born into and the one they were brought into. They need to understand how to function in
circles of people from different cultures and feel confident in their identity
as a Chinese American! We also loved
meeting other families who are adopting and have a passion for adoption as we
do. Hopefully we can reconnect over our
journey to provide support for one another.
We went to Baylor for homecoming last weekend and took some
great pictures of Brooklyn and Panda.
Panda is the stuffed bear we got to help us have something tangible to
remember our child in China until we get to meet them in person. Sometimes you can get so bogged down in
paperwork it’s hard to remember there is a real child at the end of this
journey. We plan to bring Panda with us
as a reminder to us of the child soon to join our family and to show our child
just how much we are anticipating their arrival!
Here are a few of the highlights from our trip!
Thank you all for your support and prayers! We love you!
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