Homestudy paperwork.... done

We had to have a few things updated (paperwork-wise) for our China homestudy update as well as our new Taiwan homestudy....

I received the package in the mail from Christian Family Adoptions yesterday and worked on it immediately....

We needed new financials, new medical update, which, Derek is going to help us with, a criminal investigations consent, and new life sketches for each of our family members.

Today, we paid the big fee to ASIA to get started on the dossier.
Today, I also went to our local police station to get our criminal background letter for our dossier. It should be ready in a couple of days according to the police station.

We found out that Juline, our social worker will have to come here for a home visit, so I am praying God's FAVOR on us to make it happen before Christmas. We go to Hawaii in the middle of January so I really want to have this done before we go and have our homestudy sent to Taiwan very soon!

Aaron was at the hospital yesterday, talking to Jill from our church, whose daugher had been miraculously saved and recovering well in the hospital after a car accident. Aaron was talking to her about our China adoptions slowing WAY down and he mentioned to her that we'll be adopting from Taiwan in the meantime and she said, without knowing what has been going on with us..."I think this is about God's GRACE"... Aaron said to her that we had felt like she is supposed to be named either ANNA, ANNIE or GRACE (all means Favor, gracious, GRACE) and she said "How about Anna Grace? I really think that was God because we had been wondering what to do since we already have a family member that would be her cousin named Grace and we still really liked that name... So, now we can name her Anna Grace.... I think that's perfect!

Our New Journey begins....

Aaron & I have decided to adopt from Taiwan while we wait our referral of Selah from China!!! This came a bit suddenly.... I had been wanting to adopt another girl either before or after Selah, and knowing the timeline for referral for China increasing, we have been praying about a 2nd adoption... ofcourse, we had hoped by now that there would be some development in Indonesia, but since we are not hearing any word of that, we have given up that it will ever happen....

a couple days before thanksgiving, we received an email from Barbara Jajeh, who goes to Aaron's parents church. We met her and Daniel, and their 2 little girls from China in the fall. She had been talking with Barbro and asked about what is going on with our China adoptions, and Barbro had told her it has pretty much come to t stand still... So, she sent me a link to her agency, who had recently started a Taiwan program.

I casually asked Aaron, do you want to adopt from Taiwan, to which he said, tell me more about it.... I was shocked at first because he had turned down all of my attempts in the past with Guatemala and India but since Taiwan is very close to Okinawa and it is part of China, it really appealed to him and ofcourse, to me... so we prayed about it and basically felt the peace to go the next step... this was on November 27, 2007... the next day, I sent in the application by fax and by saturday, we had our first packet in the mail. ASIA had initially wanted to do our homestudy, but after talking with Christian Family Adoptions, it seemed easier just to go with them again because they seem to think they wouldn't need as much from us.

I had the initial disappointment of thinking we had to get fingerprinted locally, but thankfully, we found out we don't have to because we've lived in the state of Oregon for 5 years! THANK God!

So, now we are waiting for ASIA to send us the 2nd packet with info on how to proceed with the dossier.

I spoke with Mindy @Christian Family Adoptions and she said it would cost us $375 for the homestudy update for China (Oh, yeah, the INS office in Yakima called and said they need an updated homestudy for the CHINA I-171H so we get to do that simultaneously).... Isn't God's timing perfect, or what??

The only thing, according to Mindy that we have to do is our Present Life Sketch, 2006 Tax statement, Financial statement, a new application, and they will need to do a home visit for the Taiwan portion. So, Juline should be calling us soon! I hope.... I am praying we get to have our home visit before christmas so that we can hopefully have our homestudy in Taiwan by the time we go to Hawaii...