While We Wait...A Contest!

We were notified a couple of weeks ago that our home study did, indeed, go to Korea on July 28. So we are now *officially* waiting for a referral. :) Shortly after that, we were discussing when our referral might come, and I thought it would be fun to have a contest here on the blog to see who can most accurately predict our referral date. (We've both made our guesses, but those will remain a secret for now.)

Here's the scoop (and this is pretty much all we know as to when to expect a referral) -- Our placement agency, AIAA, estimates 4-6 months for a referral. We know that some people have received referrals much faster, but that was several months (or even a year or more) ago. The most recent timeline I heard was of a family that waited four months. Of course, as always in adoption, there are no guarantees, so we know it could take more than six months. The matching of a child with adoptive parents is done by the agency in Korea, and no one is sure how they make those decisions. So, since we really just have no clue when we will get THE CALL, I would love to hear your guesses!!

There will even be a prize for the winner -- from Korea! We'll pick out something super-cool (hopefully!) for the winner when we travel to pick up our child.

All you have to do is leave a comment with your guess of our referral date. You can comment even if you don't have a Blogger/Google account, but please be sure to include your first name so we know who you are. :)

Happy guessing!!

Progress....finally!!!

After weeks of anxiously waiting for our home study to go to Korea, we received word this past Thursday that our home study will be on its way to Korea this upcoming week. In the world of Korean adoption (at least with the particular agency in Korea we're working with), HSTK (home study to Korea) is a very important date - it means that we are officially waiting for a referral!! Our referral might come in a matter of weeks, or more likely, in several months - there's just no way to know. Regardless of the time line from this point forward though, we're thrilled to have reached this milestone and to have a bit of a break in the process while we wait to be matched with a child.

In other adoption-related news, we received our fingerprinting appointment from USCIS (better known as Immigration) yesterday!! August 18 at 8am -- considering we have about an hour and a half drive to get there, that will be an early, early morning for us.

Fingerprinting should be the last bit of adoption "work" to do before we receive a referral. So, we're starting to turn our attention to some of the projects we'd like to get done before welcoming our child home. I'll be posting more info on those in the next few weeks.

(Yet Another) Long Overdue Update

Yeah, I know the blog has (once again) been badly neglected. Partially because we've been busy with our non-adoption lives (family visits, etc). Partially because I've been lazy. And partially because there just hasn't been a lot of adoption news lately.

We had our final home study meeting (the home visit) on May 4, and since then we've just been waiting on the home study to be written, reviewed, revised, and finalized, all of which have now been done. We're *hoping* it will go to Korea within the next week or two. At that point, we'll be officially waiting for a referral.

So first - the home visit. Easy, easy, easy. It was very laid back, as all our home study meetings have been. Our social worker asked us a few questions, took a quick tour of our home, and had us sign a couple of documents. Seriously, it could not have been any easier.

And the home study document -- we had never seen one, so we didn't know what to expect. It's about six pages that summarizes our lives -- our childhoods, marriage, jobs, home, etc. This document, along with a handful of pictures we submitted, will go to the agency in Korea (SWS), where a social worker will match us with a child.

Our agency in the US (AIAA) estimates a referral will come 4-6 months after our home study goes to Korea. From talking with other adoptive families (and blog stalking), I know referrals sometimes come more quickly than that. So we don't really don't know when to expect a referral -- sometime by the end of the year, we hope. I'm sure I'll jump every time my phone rings until we get THE CALL.

We'll then travel to Korea to pick up our child about 3-6 months after we receive the referral. So we're thinking we'll travel sometime between late 2010 (if we get a referral very quickly) to mid 2011. As I've said before, though, nothing in adoption is all that predictable. At all.

As we prepare our lives and home for the little one, I have great intentions of updating this blog more often. Time will tell if those intentions turn into reality.

A Long Overdue Update

Wow, talk about falling behind on the blog. I just checked, and the last time I posted was January 20. Three whole months? Goodness.

Part of the reason for my blog absence is that our adoption process has been a bit in limbo for the past couple of months...more details on that to come soon. The end result is that after much prayer, thought, and discussion, we have decided to switch agencies. We will still work with Lifelink for our home study, but we will now be working with Americans for International Aid & Adoption (AIAA) for placement. This wasn't an easy decision for us, but since making it we're very comfortable with - and excited about - this new direction. Again, I'll explain more in a couple of days about what led us to make this change.

Although it was a difficult decision, in the end, it won't significantly affect our adoption process. We are still adopting from Korea, and, due to the fact that AIAA's Korea adoption process tends to move more quickly than Lifelink's, we aren't really losing any time. We still hope to travel to Korea and bring our child home in late 2010 or early 2011.

The biggest change for us is that we'll be working with a different agency in Korea -- Lifelink works with Eastern Social Welfare Society (Eastern), and AIAA works with Social Welfare Society (SWS). Similar names, different agencies. Another big difference is that with Lifelink/Eastern, we were officially on the waiting list the day we submitted our application to Lifelink, while with AIAA/SWS, we will be officially waiting for a referral only after our home study and other paperwork are completed and sent to SWS in Korea.

So, now we are anxious to get things moving as quickly as possible. To that end, we have scheduled our final home study meeting (the home visit) for this upcoming Tuesday afternoon, May 4. After that, our social worker will write the home study, then I believe we have to get our state to approve it (along with some other documents perhaps...I really don't know), and then it all goes to AIAA, who will make sure everything looks ok before sending it on to SWS. We're hoping to be officially waiting for a referral in 2-3 months.

So, there you have it -- a quick (and very overdue) update. Hopefully since the adoption process is moving along again, I'll be a more consistent blogger. Hopefully.

I have no words...

I simply have no words to describe the tragedy in Haiti. There are so many heartbreaking stories coming out of Haiti, but to me it's the images that really depict the the devastation left by the earthquake and the desperation many Haitians are now facing.

 

 

(all images from time.com)

The death toll is estimated at this time to be somewhere around 70,000-100,000, and possibly higher. The population of Haiti is around 9 million. A "conservative" death count of 70,000 translates into about 0.8% of the Haitian population -- killed by a single event. To put it in context, there are somewhere around 300 million people living in the United States. If we were to experience a disaster on the level of the earthquake in Haiti (in regards to loss of life), it would kill 2.3 million Americans. Can you imagine? That's 465 times the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina combined. And for the people of Haiti, the suffering will continue for weeks, months, and even years, as survivors bury the dead, mourn their losses, recover from injuries, and endure other unimaginable hardships such as disease and a lack of shelter, food, & water.

I've always known that Haiti is a poor country, but I learned just last week that it's actually the poorest country in the western hemisphere. About 12% of children die before their first birthday, and one-third before their fifth birthday. The unemployment rate is around 60%. Half of Haitians are illiterate. 80% of people live in abject poverty, and half live on less than $60 per year. (source)

Wow. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around numbers like that.

Brad and I sponsor Clernitha, a little girl in Haiti, through Compassion International. So far, we've received no word on her or her family, but Compassion is working on getting that information to sponsors (although they obviously have more pressing matters to deal with first, we realize). We were able to locate her Child Development Center on Compassion's map and were very relieved to find that she's not too near the epicenter. It looks like she's about 60-70 miles away. We continue to pray for Clernitha and her family, heartbroken over what they are experiencing.

There are so many great organizations sending aid of all sorts to Haiti; I encourage everyone to make a donation to one (or more!) of them. If you're looking for a way to give, I highly recommend Compassion or World Vision -- and I know there are lots of other great organizations too. With wealth we enjoy here in America, I really can't imagine any reason for not giving to the people of Haiti. They desperately need us!

In closing, I know that natural disasters and other tragedies often cause us to question Where is God in this? A couple of years ago, Brad preached a sermon entitled Why, God?: The Problem of Evil that addresses this question and others. Click the link and scroll to the bottom for the mp3 file, notes, and slides.