Dave and I have been vowing to hop on derrcolombianadoption.org and update the site, although truly have not had the time to even consider making that reality. Life has been extremely busy in the Derr household this summer. We began the summer season concluding that a vegetable garden would be out for this year. We were very sad about this as our garden has brought much enjoyment to both of us since moving back to the Harrisburg area. Fortunately, we still have quite a few hot peppers from last summer!
While Dave has pushed through a summer accounting class with a local community college, I have plowed forward with renovations on our dining room and kitchen. Thanks to my Dad and Mom, we were able to frame the ceiling to the kitchen, complete electrical rennovations, and begin gutting out our backroom in May. Moving into June, I continued the work with laying a subfloor, hanging and finishing drywall, and some minor electrical work. I must say that I am not game for ever finishing drywall again! It is the messiest process I think I have ever undertaken...next to demolition work, that is.
Last Friday we welcomed a social worker from the Adoption International Program to our home for the official in-home visit. It seemed to go well. Dave and I both agreed that there is far too much hype surrounding those things. Both of us spent so much time preparing for the possible parental type questions that may be asked. We also worked hard to clean up the mess from all the repairs I had been doing. In the end, the social worker noticed the work we had been doing on the house, but it didn't seem that big a deal (we could have left some more undone and it probably would have been o.k.!). There was some irony to the visit. In our effort to prepare and and ready ourselves for the visit, we had gone out to breakfast together. We returned to the house around 9:30 in the morning, knowing that the visit was to happen between 10:00 and 10:30...in fact, we expected closer to 10:30 based on the conversations that we had over email with the social worker. Needless to say, I jumped in the shower and was out about 9:45 when, low and behold, the doorbell is ringing! Ok, it is one thing to be in sloppy clothes and a bit unkept when the doorbell rings for something like this...but it is a whole different story to be running around in your birthday suit! All told, Dave ended up without a shower, unshaved, and still even had the nice cowlick in the back of his head from sleeping while I ended up dressed with sopping hair. It was absolutely awesome and humorous (ha!) and God's way of reminding us that this visit is about preparing us for adding to our family rather than weeding out all the things that could preclude us from having a child.
So, the biggest question that we find ourselves answering these days is "What is the next big step?". We also had the opportunity to speak with our adoption consultant through Children's Hope International on Friday. This call was both lengthy and extremely helpful. At this point, we will be waiting for the home study report to be written so that a copy can be sent to Philadelphia to complete our petition for an orphan visa. In the meantime, we will be working with a psychologist through CHI to complete a psychological evaluation on each of us. We will each complete personality inventory tests followed by an over-the-phone interview of each of us. In the meantime, the psychologist will read our autobiographies and call our social worker for some additional collaborative information.
While the psychological report is the next big step, there are many small steps that we will be completing in the meantime. We have several pieces of paperwork that we will additionally gather this week and next week. All of these will need to be notarized. In the meantime, we are beginning a draft letter to the ICBF of Colombia to explain our motives for adoption through Colombia, our desire in age of child, and our qualifications as future parents. Our adoption consultant will review this letter and make suggestions as needed. The last and final step in this whole process once we have received our FBI fingerprint results, our completed home study, a response from the orphan visa request, and a completed psychological report...we will travel downtown here in Harrisburg to apostille every last piece of paperwork we have gathered and had notarized. The apostille process could take several hours one afternoon and is a verification process by the state. They will literally verify that the persons who notarized our documents are official. This process would be to satisfy Colombia's need to make sure that everything is legit.
Once the apostille process is completed, we will send all of this paperwork to Children's Hope International for final preparation and translation into Spanish for delivery to Colombia. We have been told that this process could take a couple weeks followed by a 2-4 week review process by Colombia. Once our request is reviewed and approved by Colombia, we will be placed on a waiting list...and have been recently told that most likely it will be an infant list rather than toddler! So.....we need to switch our thinking a bit here, although are terribly excited! Our wait from the approval time and being placed on that list will be between 6-9 months for an infant compared to the less than 6 month wait for a toddler. The change of waiting lists is being made based on Dave's birth in Colombia. As with all things in this process, we will continue to keep an open mind, because anything can happen at this point. We are finding that flexibility needs to be a part of our vocabulary. While they are projecting one thing, something completely different may happen. We lay these details in God's hands and trust that the outcome is based on his ongoing work and what he intended all along.
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