Today was our first homestudy meeting. I saw first because contrary to popular belief, those don't happen all at one time. I intended to write earlier this week regarding our upcoming homestudy but a few things prevented that. #1 was getting ready for the homestudy. I'm pretty sure our house is the cleanest it has been since we moved in. It also now has child locks, appliance locks, outlet covers, and lots of other child-proofing type things. This took a lot of time and work for a variety of people. I am so glad that we are surrounded by people who love us and support us in this journey. Reason #2 was I could not quite figure out how to put into words how I was feeling. I was excited, nervous, anxious, stressed, happy...sometimes all at the same time. I don't know how my husband survived the week...or the day for that matter. I am so thankful for him and how God matched us.
Of course the day did not go as planned (welcome to the world of adoption, right?). Last night, I went to clean out under our sink and found that we had a leak. After locating the source I called our landlord. He said he would be here sometime Monday or Tuesday. He arrived 30 minutes before our caseworker. Its been raining for 2 days straight so muddy footprints were all over my kitchen. When our caseworker arrived, the landlord's son was laying on our kitchen floor, half in our cabinet...this was not at all how I imagined the day.
However, she was gracious and happy to meet everyone. We went through lots of paperwork. Some was finished already. Some we worked through together. Some she left for us to work on. We walked through the house together. We passed all our safety checks! And to no surprise, I stressed out about this step way more than I needed to. We set our next interview meeting for next week.
We also discussed countries. We have said for quite some time that we were adopting from Ethiopia. When we first got involved we were encouraged to consider South Africa because it shares so many qualities with Ethiopia. We had discussed it and were open but we have still felt like Ethiopia was a much stronger option for us. Today, we were asked to consider a country that was not even an option when we first began this process...Colombia. It shares many similarities with Ethiopia as well. Our agency is also getting a lot of referrals from Colombia right now and it may speed up our process. It is so hard for me to think about a country outside of Africa because it has been the picture in my head for so long. Again, we are asking God to make it abundantly clear if this is the direction we are to be heading. Please pray along with us for this and our homestudy process as a whole. At the end of the process we will have to declare a country.
We know God has been taking care of our children and weaving their story until it joins ours. We are excited to see and be a part of what He is doing.
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