finally some GOOD adoption news!

About a month ago I gave a little update of what was (or wasn’t) going on with our adoption, all the programs we looked into without finding one that worked for our family.

Two days after writing that post I went out for coffee with a new found friend who is adopting from South Africa. Everything she told me about the program sounded like what we were looking for so after getting home I told Jared all the details and we decided I would call the agency the next morning. After the journey we’ve been on for the last two years I was really excited about what I knew about this program so far but my feelings were also very guarded, I didn’t want to commit myself and be hurt again.

Friday morning I called the agency and was able to get a hold of someone right away who gave me more info about the program:

• they currently have 25 couples in the program and want 30 a year – perfect cause all the other agencies I inquired to were above the number of couples they wanted to accept
• because the program had been closed for a few years they have quite a few “older” children available, as in the 18-24 month range – pretty much exactly what we would like
• travel time after referral is short, like 3-ish weeks – awesome! My biggest fear was getting to see my child’s face and not being able to see them in person and hold them for months after
• you stay in country for 5-ish weeks while waiting for paperwork to be completed – I love this because then we would get to really experience our child’s country and culture. It is so great for bonding and by the time we uproot them from everything they know at least he/she would be more comfortable and used to us at that point

Nearly every piece of information that came up for the program was exactly what we hoped (with one exception: most adoptions are single children, not siblings, so we are more than likely to just get referred one child).

With all that information we took the weekend to fill out our application and popped it in the mail via ExpressPost.

And we waited and waited.

This was our fourth agency we’ve applied for and I’ve never been more excited and nervous. I didn’t see any reason we shouldn’t be accepted but I wanted it so bad that I was afraid we wouldn’t be. Does that make sense?

I went back and forth between letting myself get really excited and distracting myself and not thinking about it.

And we waited some more.

I wish God would just realize I’m never going to become a patient person and just stop making me wait already!

Weeks went by and I made many a phone call to the agency. Yesterday when I called I told Raeca I was going to find call to try to get her a brother or a sister and when I was done leaving a message she said: “Did they say yes for a brother or a sister?” Oh melt my heart this sweet little girl.

After all the waiting yesterday we finally got it – we are officially accepted into the South Africa program!

WAHOO!!!!

We are currently waiting (ha, that’s how it goes!) for them to send us a binder of info but I did ask a few questions on the phone and it sounds like things are really in our favor – with many countries all the paperwork expires after one year but with SA it only expires after two years which means we don’t need to do our medical checks and a million other things all over again, all we need is our criminal record checks (which take about 10 minutes and are free at our local RCMP detachment) and our fingerprints (which I was just informed about a place where we can get them done for half the price as last time -score!).

So other than our criminal checks and fingerprints we need to update our homestudy and we also need to change our country to South Africa with Canadian Citizenship and Immigration (a part I’m not looking forward to because that is the hardest office to get clear answer from). We also get/have to put together a little family profile that will get sent to South Africa to help match us with our newest addition.

I don’t really have any timelines from here out, I think I’ve already expressed at how great I am at waiting so I would love it if you would keep us in your prayers over the next few weeks while we update a bunch of paperwork and then from there as we wait!