Home Study Packet off in the mail!

Aahhh, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders...our packet is out of our hands, and into FedEx's!

After Bethany receives our paperwork, they will need to verify all the contents, and send off our child abuse clearance forms to be approved by the state. Our contact at Bethany says it could take 2-4 weeks for the state to clear us- we are praying closer to 2! 

There is a slight hang-up in our medical reports- there was an error in my script for bloodwork and drug screening, so my report from the lab came back "ambiguous."  I am going to go first thing tomorrow to be re-tested...hopefully with a correct script dictating which analyses to complete. I still sent out all the paperwork (including that report from our lab) because I figure Bethany can work on getting everything else verified, and send out our clearance forms while I am getting re-tested. Since the clearance will take 2-4 weeks, I will be able to get this corrected with time to spare.

What does our verified packet mean? So happy you asked! :) Our social worker from Bethany can then schedule our Home Study which consists of about 4 home visits. During these visits, she will be ensuring that our home is a safe, stable environment to bring a child into. She will also be giving us instructions on how to complete our Dossier #1.

Once we submit the Dossier #1 to Russia, and they translate it (it's roughly 65 pages long!), and register it with Russia's Ministry of Education, then we will be on a waiting list for a child. That doesn't mean that there are not enough children, and too many parents waiting- it simply means that it takes time for them to match (given our info completed in the Home Study) our requests and information with a region of Russia, and then more specifically, to an orphanage and a specific child. The wait time from submission of Dossier #1 to Referral (being given info on a specific child, and travel dates for trip #1) is approximately 6-9 months. SO- not sure if my goal is realistic (I am not sure how long the Home Study will take, or how much more paperwork there is for Dossier #1), but I would love to have that submitted by the end of April....which would mean we could get a phone call between October and December? Again, these are total "guesstimates" that I am trying to just wrap my brain around right now.  Just thinking ahead like that makes me really excited for a possible miracle Christmas-time phone call and visit!

Thank you all for your prayers and your kind, encouraging comments so far on our blog. I hope to be updating in the next few weeks with some Russian orphanage info and some adoption lingo definitions.