Adoption Update: Home study, Education, Profile Book, and More!
Hey everyone, we have quite a few updates for our adoption to tell you all about. Thank you to everyone who has partnered with us and prayed for us as we move forward in our journey! Below are our updates:
Home Study: If you are not familiar with a home study, this is where a licensed professional comes to evaluate if you are fit to parent (no pressure, right?). They go through everything: our mental and physical health, finances, home, preparedness, and so much more. Then they write the report of whether or not you pass. Thankfully, if you do not pass first try, they will give you advise as to how to do better next time. This report is needed for the legal side of the adoption.
Finding a home study agency took much longer than we anticipated. Since our adoption agency, Nightlight, is not authorized to do home studies in our state, we had to find another agency to provide one. At the begging of last year there were five licensed home study agencies in Vermont; so it couldn’t be that hard to find one, right? WRONG! One went out of business and one refused to work with anyone who is not adopting through them. There was one that we really liked, but their home study provider was retiring, and they were not taking on any new cases. The next one said they would potentially take us after go-arounds of phone tag, disorganization, some less-than-happy conversations, and a hefty projected bill. After all of our talks and prayers, we really did not want to work the last agency, but for a while, they looked like our only option. Finally, a few days ago, we were able to get in touch with the fifth agency on the list, Wide Horizons for Children, and they accepted us! This is a huge answer to prayer! They’re still on the expensive side, but they seem much kinder, have worked with Nightlight before, and we have friends who loved working with them. Needless to say, this has made us much more excited to move forward with our home study process.
Education: Nightlight requires that we take at least 24 hours of educational courses before we can move forward with a potential match. We are really thankful that they are so thorough in this process. They cover topics from open adoptions, infant drug and alcohol exposure, how to talk to your child about being adopted, and everything in-between. We are working through these educational hours now, and it has been a bit overwhelming. Please pray that we can work through these well, have good conversations around these topics, and learn as much as possible to give our child the best environment possible, knowing regardless that this is a hard situation.
Profile Book & video: A profile book is a way for a prospective birth mother/father to learn more about us before they to meet us. They’re kind of a “snapshot” of our life, showing the birth parent(s) what their child’s life would look like if they chose us (again, no pressure, right?).
Nightlight has a partnership with Our Chosen Child to help create our book and video that are presented to parents seeking to place their child in adoption. We will work with them, sending photos, telling stories, and giving information to create this book and video. We have been collecting photos for quite a while, and I am super excited to see where this process takes us.
Fundraising & Calendars: We have been blown away by people’s generosity throughout this process. We are SO thankful for donors near and far who have helped us along the way. Along with that, we have sold over 40 calendars with our calendar fundraiser. We still have a few leftover, so if you would like one, let us know!
Once our home study is complete, we can really start applying for adoption grants. We are hoping this makes the process a bit easier, but regardless, we trust God to provide the funds when we need them. Please pray for us in this process as we fill out an endless stream of forms in hopes that we can properly impress the right people.
We will keep you posted on other fundraising opportunities that we will have come up. In the meantime, if you would like to donate, you can send a check to Washington Baptist Church (P.O. Box 203, Washington, VT 05675) with Orphan Grant on the memo line and that will go to the fund which is helping us in our adoption. You can also give online on our Adoption Bridge account.
Summary: If you made it this far in the blog post, I applaud you! As you can see there are a lot of things happening right now. Adoption is a big process of hurry up and wait. We are in the hurry up phase, while waiting for a few things here and there. Regardless of everything, we are so thankful for the support of our families, church, church partners, and friends along the way.
Prayer Requests:
Pray that the home study process with be smooth and that we don’t have any big hurdles to jump over.
Pray that J. and I will be able to learn a lot from our education courses. Right now, some things look really intimidating. I have had to keep my anxiety in check to not ponder the worst case scenarios that have been presented in the courses.
Pray the profile book process is smooth and we are able to do a good job of documenting this crazy little life we currently life.
Pray that God will provide for us as we seek to raise funds and apply for grants. We believe that God has a plan to provide, but please pray that we will rest in him as we wait.
Most of all, please pray that we can find God’s peace throughout this process.
Praises:
We found a home study agency! As mentioned, that process was NOT easy for us.
We have raised about $19,000 toward our adoption. God has showed out big in this process! (We still have around $20,000 to raise)
We have been surrounded by encouraging words and prayers throughout this whole process.
Overall, thank you to everyone who has partnered with us thus far. We will keep you posted as to things to come!