We are almost finished with our home-study - last visit is this Wednesday! There are a total of five. Once this visit is over, our social worker will take about a week or so to get the official approved home-study together and then send it to our adoption agency. They will look over it, correct any mistakes, etc. and send it back to our social worker. She will then make and sign several certified copies making us officially home-study approved! This part has been so time-consuming, and it made me feel so encouraged to hear from another adoptive mom this past week that that was their most difficult part of the paper-work process.
The next step is to fill out and send in Form I-600 A - Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition to the US Department of Homeland Security & US Citizenship and Immigration Services. That's a mouthful huh? Once they receive this form, they can take anywhere from 4-8 weeks to process it. We are praying for 4! During this time, they send us an official time/date/place for a finger-printing appointment. Some are required to go to the capital for this, although we're not sure if we'll have to do this or not. Once that is done, they send you back an official "approval" from the US Government to adopt from your specified country, age/sex of the child, etc.
While the I-600 form is being processed, we can begin to gather documents for our dossier. This is basically a compilation of notarized, certified, official etc. forms as well as photos of our house and the baby's room that get submitted to the government in Uganda once we get our referral. This isn't so much a hard step as it seems like it's just a lot of tedious detail. Every form has to be exactly correct or the government could deny the adoption.
Once we get back the approved 1-600 form we get placed on the official waiting list for a referral match! Typically this waiting time has been an average of 2-4 months (we're obviously praying closer to 2!). Once you receive a referral, you have a medical specialist go over it with you, and then you choose to accept/deny it. If you accept, then we send our dossier to Uganda and wait for our court date. Once we get that, then we're on our way to Africa!
The #1 question we've gotten is, "so do you know how old and who your son is?". At this point we do not know who he is or how old he is. When you apply for adoption, you choose criteria that you are willing to accept. We felt very strongly that the Lord has a son for us, and the ages we chose are 0-4. We would prefer 0-2, but we are trusting God with the referral and we know that he knows who our specific little one is already, and He is keeping him safe (either in his birth mother's womb or in the orphanage!). We talk about him like we know him because we know it will be only a matter of time before he's here. We are choosing to believe in His good promises!
The #1 question we've gotten is, "so do you know how old and who your son is?". At this point we do not know who he is or how old he is. When you apply for adoption, you choose criteria that you are willing to accept. We felt very strongly that the Lord has a son for us, and the ages we chose are 0-4. We would prefer 0-2, but we are trusting God with the referral and we know that he knows who our specific little one is already, and He is keeping him safe (either in his birth mother's womb or in the orphanage!). We talk about him like we know him because we know it will be only a matter of time before he's here. We are choosing to believe in His good promises!
We hope this clarifies some of the more specific questions you might have. We'll be glad to answer anything we can. Please join us in praying for a smooth, quick process and to keep our little man safe. We know and expect things to not always go as planned, but we are hopeful that by Christmas we'll be on our way to bring our son home! Wouldn't that be the best Christmas gift ever?!
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