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.