And So It Begins Again (But This Time I Have Company!)

The international adoption process is overwhelming at best - complicated, confusing, frustrating, repetitive, daunting, time-consuming, stress-provoking. It is often full of road blocks and stop signs and inordinate levels of bureaucracy. It is not for the fainted-hearted. Getting through Nastia's adoption felt like competing in the Paper Olympics -- and barely placing! Couple that with Anya's failed adoption and you could see why I might have been hesitant to try again. Then, add to that the months and months of preparing paperwork for D and having that fail. I'm telling you, I am learning patience deeper than I ever though possible!

So, fast forward to today. I'm back in the saddle: I have signed with a new home study agency and had my first home meeting today. I like the new social worker a lot. She might have scared me if I had her for my first HS experience, because she really tells it like it is! She was not afraid to tell me exactly what she thought, and I was impressed with her level of knowledge about RAD, attachment issues, and the like.

Anyway -- I'm excited to finally be seeing progress with D's adoption. Sadly, I have to do the entire HS and all the required paperwork all over again. Just sent in my new CORIs and SORIs, and am preparing to file yet another 1600A with a brand new HS. Some of my dossier paperwork has expired and some of it must be redone since I have a new HS agency. It's really like starting from square one. The only thing I really don't have to re-do is my biography - the easiest part to redo!

But here's the exciting news:

I won't be taking this journey alone.

Do you remember my friend Kim and her daughter Bridget who accompanied me to the orphanage in June? Do you remember my writing about Bridget's absolute love obsession with one particular 7 year old girl? Well, she wore down her mom, and finally, after four months, her Dad, too. The Ayers family is officially starting the adoption process too! Little G will, God-willing, be coming home to her forever family sometime in 2012!

I said in an earlier post about Bridget 'Never underestimate the power of a little girl to change the world' or something like that. Well, Miss Bridget did it! She never gave up. She didn't hound, she didn't harass....she just patiently and gently kept G in everyone's thoughts, and eventually her persistence made a difference!

Kim and her husband are using the same attorney and HS agency that I am. If they are able to move quickly, it's my hope that we might be able to travel to bring our kids home on the same trip. Keep praying!

I will try to keep you posted on my progress on the homestudy. Right now I am working on getting three new reference letters this week, and finding funds to prepay for my 4 post placement reports (a new requirement, since I last adopted.)

Please keep both our families in your prayers. If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know what challenges and obstacles likely await us over the next 6-12 months. We need all the prayers we can get. Both of us will be doing insane amounts of fundraising over the next several months - ebay, craigslist, yard sales, bake sales. and anything else we can think of. If you have ideas that have worked for you, let us know!

Also, as I'm VERY interested in promoting older child adoption in general, please don't hesitate to leave a comment asking any questions you might have. I'm ready to answer! I'll leave you with some of the quotes that are getting me through this process:

'You can ask for anything in my name and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the father.' ~John 14:13

'This is the confidence we have in approaching God; that if we ask anything

according to His will, He hears us.' ~ 1 John 5:14

'I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.' ~Psalm 32:8