It was absolutely wonderful to open our email a little over a week ago and receive word from Julie, the Colombian adoption program director for CHI! She had sent us an update to let us know that the Oregon office had received our Home Study, everything was fine with it...they had completed 3 documents with our Home Study that we would need for our dossier to be sent to Colombia! This was exciting news, although I must say that what followed was even more exciting!
Julie went on to say that it looked like we were getting very close to sending our dossier, so she wanted to give us a heads up so that we could get ourselves ready because she felt that our wait for a referral would be about 2-4 MONTHS! from the time our dossier was sent to Colombia!!!!! Dave and I were more than smiles! What fantastic news! Needless to say, we are now scurrying around again...getting the nursery ready and finishing up some of our smaller projects around the house!
The social worker did connect with the psychologist back in the middle of October, and we spoke with the psychologist last Thursday. Everything was fine with this evaluation, and we were told to expect our psychological referral in the mail in 2-3 weeks from last Friday. In the meantime, I called Immigrations to make sure that everything was moving along with our I-171H and it looks that we will receive both pieces of paperwork around the same time. This means we should be able to send our dossier out to Oregon by late November/early December. Whoo-hoo! This is such a praise and encouragment.
I must confess that the slowness of everything through the fall was beginning to get to me. I had finally come to terms with the waiting, feeling like God was teaching me a bit in the arena of patience and perseverence. In fact, I had sort of set my sights on a June to September referral as the last we had spoken with Julie the wait was to be about 6-9 months with 2-4 weeks of translation and administrative sort of stuff.
Things have most surely changed! We invite your prayers as we finish up this leg of our adoption. Pray for a speedy return of the Psychological Report and I-171H. This is important, not because of my impatience =), but because we had started our home study process before ever applying to CHI, so some of our documents would need to be updated on the home study if the dossier is not sent out prior to the first part of December. The notary we originally chose for certification of some of our documents has a commission expiration in the early part of December. So, we are now in a bit of a time crunch, and we are hoping that these last two things come to us sooner rather than later so that everything moves forward without bumps. As a side note, this notary is extending her commission, so we were looking to see what we could do in just having her update the stamped portion of each of these documents...in the event that the paperwork we are waiting on arrives later than expected.
I must say, I have had to consciously choose not fret about this...it is a challenge to lay these things in the Lord's hands, and be reminded that all the details of our adoption are not just being orchestrated by God, but also in his timing!
On a completely different note, we would also invite your prayers for my family (particularly my father and his family) as we grieve the loss of my grandfather. He had been fighting cancer of the spleen and leukemia since his diagnosis in the spring, and a recent fall in the earlier part of last week caused a cranial bleed that complicated matters. The neurologist that had seen him decided that he was not well enough to endure surgery, so they chose to wait things out although made it clear that my grandfather's prognosis was not very good. He died last Wednesday. The funeral service was Saturday. While it was nice to see family and friends back home, I wish it could have been under different circumstances.
As a final bit of sharing, I still plan to attempt my first marathon this weekend! Brooke, a college friend, will be doing this with me! I am so excited, yet a bit nervous! I have definitely committed myself to a goal of simply finishing...I will worry about times down the road. Until later and a more formal update on what a marathon is like...blessings to you!
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