Homestudy Approved!

It's been a little while since we have posted an update, so here is what has happened in the meantime.

We have attended a Adoptive Parent Training class, which was a great experience, & also gave us the opportunity to meet some other international adoptive parents in the process.

We had our social worker, Judy, pay us a visit to our home to complete our Homestudy. We were a little nervous, as we knew she would go in-depth with not only our physical home but also with interviews of us & our kids. Afterwards, we realized that it wasn't as big of a deal that we had made it out to be. Judy was great. She was so relaxed & made us feel at ease. When she left our house that day she let us know that we would be receiving our completed Homestudy paperwork in the next couple of weeks.

Just this last Friday, we received our approved Homestudy in the mail. There were 4 notarized copies of it (just like Judy had said there would be). We were so excited! This is the documentation that we need in order to apply to Immigration & also to be able to apply for some potential grants. We feel that we are making progress and moving on to the next step.

So, that next step is to schedule an appointment with Immigration, which is located in St. Louis.  This process, we have been told, takes about 45 days to get back & approved. Then, the next step is to compile our Dossier to send to Holt International Headquarters, which in turn gets sent to the Holt Office in Ethiopia.

Natalie and I get excited each time that we progress to the next step of our journey. We have been so fortunate to have met some Amazing families that have also adopted from Ethiopia. They have opened our eyes & hearts to other things & ideas that we didn't even realize. We feel led to do even more things than just our individual adoption, because we know that God has a bigger plan. We have been amazed at the impact that this has had on us & others (and we haven't even really begun yet).  Natalie & I have just been realizing that all we have to do is be open to listening to what God is telling us & just react & respond.

We are at peace as we know that God is at work in our family's life. Thank you for your support and prayers. We will keep you updated as new things happen.