Many of you have been asking how things are going. In a word... Frustrating, but we were expecting it to be. As you may know, we have already completed everything we need to do, to be able to adopt. Now we are just waiting to find the right match.
The average time for people like us to find a match is 6 months and we have only been looking for 2. Although we expect that it could take longer for us, as we have set some pretty specific parameters of who we would like to be matched with. So, now it is just a waiting game for us. But this is not what has been the most frustrating.
Part of the process of finding a match is that we search for children on Adoptuskids.org. When we find someone we think might be a good match for us, at this point we can submit an inquiry. Once we submit an inquiry, we wait. Eventually a case worker will respond and sometimes they ask for us to submit our home study. Once our home study is submitted to a case worker...depending on the state, they typically forward our home study (along with everyone else who has submitted a home study) to a committee. That committee then looks through the home studies, and picks which family they think will be the best match for their kid.
The frustrating part is that if they don't find you to be a match, they typically don't tell you, instead you just don't hear from them and then you have to assume that you haven't been chosen. Not hearing any response is what is the most frustrating. In this day and age when you can track an online order from shipping to doorstep... minute by minute, it's hard to not be able to follow up.
So far, we have submitted our home study to a handful of kids. Some of the case workers have taken a few weeks to respond to our inquiry and then ask for our home study. And then some have taken a few more weeks before they email us back to let us know that our home study has been forwarded to the committee. Other's we simply haven't heard anything at all. At the moment we do know that our home study (along with many others) are being considered in two cases. One case in Georgia and one in Texas. So now we wait, and we have no idea if we will hear anything or not.
So that is where we are in terms of finding a match.
In the meantime...
We continue to read books and study about older child adoption. There are two books that we have read that we ABSOLUTELY encourage everyone to read, whether you have children or not. The first is The Connected Child by Karyn Purvis, PhD. This book has given us invaluable insight to children and their behavior and how we should approach these behaviors. This book will be at our side at all times, once we have a child in our home. The second book is Boundaries by Townsend & Cloud. This book is valuable in every area of life. There is a good chance that after Christmas we will have a few extra copies of these books for people to borrow.
The other thing we have been working on is applying for adoption grants. We have currently applied for two of them. One is for Southern Baptist Pastors and Missionaries and is managed by the North American Mission Board arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. The other grant we have applied for is Show Hope which was created and is managed by Steven Curtis Chapman. We have not heard yet if we will receive any grant money from either of these groups yet. The SBC Grant has responded and said once we have a match placed in our home, to let them know, and our application will move forward at that point. And our application for Show Hope is currently under review and can take up to 3 months.
We are also currently looking into a few fundraising options. One that we are excited about and will likely do in the spring is called Both Hands. For this fundraiser, we will work with the Both Hands organization and essentially what we will be doing is getting a few friends who are handy at doing projects around the house to commit to helping us. Then once we have a team we will ask everyone we know and everyone they know to sponsor us as we are connected with a widow in the area whose home needs a little TLC. We will then spend a day, fixing up her home and visiting with her. It really is a win-win situation because a widow's home gets fixed up and we raise funds to help with our adoption. You can find more info on Both Hands at bothhands.org. Of course you are also welcome to donate to our adoption at www.gofundme.com/stephen-sarah-adopted or give to us directly. All donated monies will be invested until a time that it is needed.
Long Story Short...
To make a long story...a little longer, right now we are in a hurry up and wait mode. Until a State decides that we are the right people for their child, there isn't a lot that we can do, except keep searching and sending inquiries (and learn to manage our frustration).
Thank you all for your love, support and prayers! We'll keep you posted!!
And be sure to let us know if you want to borrow one of our books OR if you are interested in helping us fix up a widow's home.
Love in Christ,
Stephen and Sarah
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