Great News, Bad News, Another Lesson Begins

The great news is that we received our I-171h today! They told us 6 to 8 weeks and it would have been 5 weeks tomorrow.

The bad news is that the special needs child placing agency that was supposed to take over our home study is now saying that they may not be able to help us. Apparently, she thought that we live in Charleston instead of Charles Town. Now they are saying that they are only licensed in region 1 of WV, which does not include our county. She is going to check with the licensing department to see if they can help us this one time.

I looked up the WV application for Child Placing Agency License, and sure enough you have to list the counties that you are going to work in. I cannot imagine that they will help us now. It seems to me that a STATE license should cover the STATE, not just certain counties. But who knows?

I am really sick by this since I could have had our home study taken care of last Saturday, even though it would have cost us A LOT more money. At this point, I am just fed up and want it done.

I don't really know what we are going to do now. I emailed the other agency to see if she can come out this Saturday.

He's an On Time God!

Just as we thought that we were going to have to go with the new VERY expensive agency tomorrow, our original social worker called and told me that the agency that works with special needs foster children agreed to work with us!

We are working the details out next week, as it was almost 5:00 when the answer was given. We're not sure of the cost involved yet, but the newest agency told our social worker that it would be a small fraction of the cost that the other agency was going to charge. The newest agency said that they would do everything possible to help us get this worked out within the next two weeks. Praise God!

They will meet us and make sure that all of the state and Hague requirements have been met. We just completed our parent training requirements for the Haugue Convention, so that's taken care of.

So, praise God for that HUGE answered prayer!!! Thank you all for your prayers!!! It's funny how God often chooses to work things out at the last minute. I think He's trying to get my attention to have patience and trust in Him more. lol All of the worrying, griping, and stressing that I have done, and here God comes the day before we are getting ready to go with another agency, and spend a crazy amount of money to get it done, with an answer to our prayer. He's probably thinking, "And let that be a lesson to you." lol

Lesson learned, thank you God! Hopefully, I won't need another lesson for a little while! lol And if I do, hopefully I'll handle it with more trust and peace in the Lord. It's hard, when you so badly want to get the children out of there and it seems like things are going wrong and stacking up against "your" plan. But I just have to remember that God has His own plan and sometimes I need to get out of His way!!

I am so thankful that we have a patient God that loves us in our state of humanness.
He must have a sense of humor as He watches us meddle and try to fix what we think is going wrong.

Home Study Visit Planned for Saturday!

We didn't hear anything from our original social worker today, so I guess there was nothing positive to report from her end. I've given her until Friday to get a solution.

I heard back from the other home study agency and she is able to come out this Saturday!! Thank the Lord!!! Thank you all for praying!!! We have planned for her to come out on Saturday, but she is aware that we are giving our original social worker until Friday to find a solution. The main reason we are giving her until Friday is because of the expense.

So, more than likely on Saturday and Sunday, we will have our new social worker coming in and "updating" our home study. She said she can have it completed it 2 weeks as long as we get our file back from our original social worker. If not, she will have to run our child abuse clearance reports again. I don't believe that it will be an issue.

We are still waiting to see if immigration is going to approve us off of the original home study. That could potentially be another set back. It's been one month since USCIS received our home study. Our notice said we should receive our I-171h within 6 to 8 weeks from the receipt of the home study. So we should have either an approval or rejection within the next 2 to four weeks. I'm praying that it will be an approval, closer to 2 weeks so that we can get our dossier submitted before my trip in April. We were hoping to be able to hand deliver it to the SDA, when I go next month, but right now it's not looking so good for the home team. However, we're praying for a miracle!! It's in God's hands!

Day 20 and No Solution

We are now waiting until tomorrow to give our original social worker a chance to rectify the situation. Hopefully, she can come up with something that is cheaper and faster.

Our facilitator was supposed to call the other social worker with the child placement agency today to see if she can come out earlier or at least hold her schedule open for March 21st until we find out if our original social worker comes up with a solution for this mess. I have not heard anything from our facilitator as to if he made contact with the new social worker yet today.

That's all. Day 20 of no solid answers.

Still Trying to Work This Out

The last post I mentioned an agency that was possibly going to help us get our home study problem straightened out. I heard back from her today and she agreed to work with us and take over our home study. This is great news, but at the same time it has turned out to be much more expensive than we had anticipated and also it is going to set us further behind than we were originally told. She can't even come out to our house until March 21st (at the earliest) and then it will take her 2 weeks from there. We may have to do this as a last resort.

Our original social worker has made some calls to her contacts at a couple of child placing agencies to see if she can find someone to "take over" and perform this faster & more cost effectively. Honestly, I am praying that she can find someone and it will work out. I don't care who does it as long as they have a valid child placing agency license and can do it fast! Our first option doesn't appear to be that fast, but it could end up being our only hope. I should know more later today, I hope!

On the positive side, all of our dossier documents will be notarized and completed, as long as our bank notary will go down the block to notarize our medical statements, tomorrow. That is with the exception of our USCIS approval and state background check that should be here in the next couple of weeks. USCIS has our home study and I was told that we should be hearing something soon (as long as they are ok with our home study, pray that they will be). Brenda's other clients haven't had any issues with USCIS not approving them due to the home study, so I'm just praying that we won't either! We had already received our state background check a month ago, but the notary's commission is going to expire 3/18/08. So now we are having to wait for his new stamp to arrive because he is the only person that notarizes the background checks for the state of WV. Absolutely ridiculous! And from what I was told he has a pile of background checks to notarize once he gets his stamp. Hopefully ours won't be lost & will be sent out quickly!! It just makes me nervous knowing that our background check has been lying on someone's desk for a month, especially when he is piled up with tons of other requests! I'm just praying and trying to trust God in all of this. It is certainly a test of my faith. But it's all in God's hands, I've learned that.

Please keep us in your prayers and pray that God will give us guidance as to which direction to go with the home study issue. Either way, we need to get on the ball ASAP, because time is ticking away for Nadia. :( Also, please pray that the rest of our documents will come through quickly and accurate.

Thanks for all of your prayers and support, we really appreciate it!

Still Working on the Home Study Agency Dilemma

We are still working on the dilemma with our home study agency license. It has been a big mess, but I think our facilitator has found a solution. Basically, our home study was completed by a certified social worker operating independently through her own business. She in no way violated any laws set by the state of WV. The problem is that we have to submit a home study agency license with our dossier. Our home study agent does not have a home study agency license, because there is no such license in the state of WV. However, the country that we are adopting from requires that license before they will approve us to adopt.

We have been very concerned that we would have to repeat our home study, which would mean that we would have to completely start over with EVERYTHING that we have done up until this point for our dossier. In addition to the two months worth of work that would be lost, we would also have to pay between $2,000 to $3,000 for a new home study. Also, the adoption agency that would perform it, this time, told me it would take 3 months to complete it.

As of right now, it appears that our facilitator has found an angel to help us out! She works for a child placement agency and has an "adoption agency" license, which the girls' country will accept! The problem is that her office is located over 400 miles away from us. She is the only person that we have found that is willing to take over from our existing home study without making us complete the entire thing over again. It would cost us a few hundred dollars, rather than a few thousand, and she says she could have it completed within 2 weeks!! She is going to check with one more agency near us to see if they will help us by taking over. This agency that she is calling has refused to do the same in the past. If they will not help us, she may. We haven't received a definite answer from her yet, but we are praying so hard that she will be able to help us. It's a really far drive for her and we are just praying that she will do this for us if we pay her extra mileage and get her a hotel room.

Please be praying that this will work out! We can't afford to lose 5 months of our time because of Nadia. Nadia is scheduled for transfer in July. I realize that whatever happens is because it is God's will, but we are praying and hoping for a quick and effective solution!

I will update and let everyone know what transpires as soon as I get an answer today.

Thanks so much for your prayers and for following our journey. Please remember all of the little orphans in the world in your prayers. Also, please remember Dylan Pierce in your prayers. He is the newborn son to my cousin Brandy and her husband Cliff Pierce. He was suctioned out at birth and this caused a fracture in his skull. He still has some swelling from it, but all in all appears to be doing very well! He passed his hearing screening Monday, and that was an answered prayer! He failed his initial hearing screening due to the swelling on his little head. He has another hearing test in 6 months. Pray that will also be a praise report! Thanks so much for remembering all of these requests in your prayers! It means a lot to us!

Welcome New Visitors

I just posted this link to Chloe's website, so I wanted to say "thanks for visiting" to anyone that might be stopping by for the first time. Our adoption process started in January so if you are interested in reading earlier posts, just check out our archive.

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog!!