Waiting on Referral
We finished our Home Study and completed our Immigration paperwork. We then submitted our dossier to the country we are adopting from. To give an estimate on paperwork time for other parents considering adoption, we signed the Adoption Agency application on Sept 11th, 2017 and our country officially registered us on April 10th, 2018. Each country and process is different, but that is how long it took us. And I was pretty quick to complete every step, so the process just took that long.
Now we've been waiting 3 months of the average 17 months to be matched with a child, and it is already hard. We were very busy for the first two, but after that it hit me. And then I keep getting asked "any news on the adoption", and that is equally hard. When something has me down, I try to take my energy and channel it into something positive. So I have started learning the language from a free app, applied for our first grant, and continue selling on the etsy shop. I have also joined some facebook groups for the country we are adopting from, that has been very informative! I highly recommend that for those in the process. It's great to hear from other families being placed, and learn from their experiences.
It's been quite the experience so far! We have had some blessings come as well. I have been connected with some awesome parents who have adopted and are incredibly supportive. We also had our AC go out, fridge/oven, and garage door break on us. So we had some unexpected expenses and debt come at us, but I know God will equip us.
That's the only update we have ... is we are still waiting :)