The new year brought with it a defining moment in our lives. Through much prayer we felt the distinct calling from God to go to China to bring our daughter home....and thus our journey is beginning.
We have been feeling the call to adopt for quite sometime, but didn't really know where or how to start. On January 7th we met with an Adoption Social Worker to determine what type of adoption (Domestic Vs International) would work best for our family and after a 2 hour session left with one phrase left etched forever on our hearts..."baby girls are being abandoned in China." It was without much time that we heard God speaking to us "Your daughter is waiting for you in China." Wow!
So starts our three month long (or longer) paper chase to receive both Canadian and Chinese approval...with an anticipated Log in Date sometime during the Summer of 2007. (The LID is the official date that our dossier is received in China, after which our long wait for our daughter begins (15-24 months.)
Feb 6, 2007 We picked up our Home Study Package and paid our first deposit.
Feb 7, 2007 Criminal Record Checks Done
Feb 14, 2007 Medical Checkups for both of us!
Feb 14, 2007 Prior Contact Forms with the Ministry for Children and Families. (They check to see if a child in our care has ever been removed)
Feb 15,2007 Kim's Blood Tests
Feb 16, 2007 Collecting all the required documents; Passports for both of us, original birth certificates, marriage certificate, records of employment, financial records, reference checks (done by some very lovely people Thank you!)
Feb 18,2007 Our first visit with our Social Worker for our Home Study. She met us in our home and we provided information regarding our families, heritage and upbringing.
Feb 20, 2007 Drew's Blood Tests
Feb 26,2007 All Medical History Forms completed
March 4, 2007 2nd visit with our Social Worker for our Home Study. She came to our home and asked us questions regarding our parenting philosophy, spiritual beliefs, our marriage and our beliefs regarding discipline.
March 15, 2007 Our first interview with a family who has adopted two little girls from China.
March 17, 2007 Our second interview done with a family who has adopted 2 girls from China.
March 18, 2007 Our third visit from our Social Worker for our Home Study. Today we talked about our community, our home and once again, our discipline methods. Please pray for us, as we are feeling very discouraged and apprehensive about the home study results. This process of being "examined" is a bit more stressful than either of us has imagined.
We are brought back to God's promise in Jeremiah 29:11-12 " For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you."
March 27,2007 Another visit to our GP...Kim had to get a letter stating that the minor surgeries she has had in "no way impairs her future parenting abilities."
April 1, 2007 Our fourth visit with our Social Worker for our home study. Today she met with us and we went over our financial statement and talked about the issues our daughter might face in regards to racism and what supports there are for multiracial families. We also talked about what other supports we might need to access when we bring our daughter home such as IDP, Speech, Physio, attachment workers, pediatricians, post adoption support...She will be e-mailing us a preliminary draft of her written Home Study and recommendation later this week for us to take a look at. This will be a critical moment in our journey.
We are reminded of Psalm 33:11 "the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations."
Prayer Request: Please pray that Kim's passport will arrive soon as the Adoption Centre has a mailing that is going to China in May and we would like to be part of that group. The passport is a required document and our adoption application will be put on hold if Kim's passport does not arrive before May 2007.
April 2, 2007 Well we got back the draft of our home study today and it says...I quote ..."As a result of my assessment of Kim and Drew as prospective adoptive parents, I am pleased to recommend them for the placement of a low risk female child up to the age of 12 months at time of placement." YEAH! We are half way there.....there still is a possibility that we won't be given approval by the Chinese authorities, but we are trusting that God will continue to guide us. God is so Good to us! He reminded me today as I read our home study results that "there is power in his name."
April 9, 2007 Today was our LAST visit with our Social Worker! We signed off on our home study! Yeah! Today we talked about how/when we will discuss the adoption process with our child and looked at the legal issues adoptive parents face. So now...our Social Worker will hand deliver the completed home study to the Adoption Agency where it will be looked at by a cultural consultant to see if there is anything in it that the authorities in China may frown upon. This week we also have to gather up all the documents and photographs we have been collecting and arrange a meeting with our Adoption Worker. We are still waiting for Kim's passport!
April 13, 2007 Today we met with the Adoption Centre and handed in ALL our documents (minus Kim's passport) and photographs. We are rejoicing that they are REMOVING ENTIRELY the comments in our home study that we were worried may get misunderstood during the translation process. God has answered all our prayers. Thank you to those of you who have been praying on our behalf. We appreciate your friendship and faithfulness to us. So, for the next couple of weeks the Adoption Centre will be putting together our dossier and when it is completed our package will start its long journey to China with stops in Vancouver and Ottawa along the way.
April 16,2007 Well....we have found out that Passport Canada does not have Kim's passport application; whether or not it made it that far we don't know...all we know is that it was sent by courier on Jan 29th and no one has seen it since. Purolator is currently searching for it and promises to call us in three days time. So, now as Kim scrambles to put together another passport application, we are praying that someone at Passport Canada will help us bypass the current 12 week waiting time. The Adoption Centre has written us a letter stating that they need a copy of the passport by May 1st, so maybe that will help. Please pray that the lost application will "suddenly appear" or that we will speak with someone who can help us get a passport quicker than 12 weeks. If we do not receive the passport by the beginning of May we will not be able to send our application to China this Spring as planned.
April 20, 2007 God is so Faithful. The past few days we have been speaking with Passport Canada and Purolator to determine what happened to Kim's passport application. Everyone we have spoken to has no record of the application ever reaching its destination. After coming to the conclusion that it had been lost, Kim put together another passport application and made arrangements to go to Vancouver to see if we could get one made for us quickly. However, last night Drew noticed that our Visa had a charge on it from Passport Canada...so this morning Kim called Passport Canada once again and this time the agent stated that there is no record of it ever being recorded as lost, but that it had been received and is now processed and is on it's way to us! Definitely the power of prayer in action! Thank you for praying!
April 25, 2007 KIM'S PASSPORT HAS ARRIVED!
April 30, 2007 Well today we handed in the last of our payment that was due and a copy of Kim's passport. Now everything is completely out of our hands and the waiting begins. First we wait for our Log in Date...we are hoping it will be sometime in June but we have heard some folks from Kelowna have waited as long as four months for theirs. There are not a lot of Chinese holidays in the next couple of months, so it should only be about 6 weeks.
May 15, 2007 We haven't heard yet if our papers have begun their journey. Our agency told us they would get mailed out in the later part of the month. We are hoping they go out in the next week in order for us to have any chance of a LID (log in date) in June. Hopefully we will hear soon. We can't wait to be DTC (dossier to China)...baby steps I know, but once our papers are off we are that much closer to meeting our daughter.
May 17, 2007 Our Papers have begun their journey! HOORAY!Our dossier has been sent (May 10th) to Vancouver to be notarized. Then it will be sent to the Foreign Affairs and Chinese Embassy in Ottawa to be legalized and authenticated. At that point it will be sent back the Adoption Center here in Kelowna. They will give us a copy of the dossier and send the original to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA). We expect to hear back from the CCAA within one month of sending the dossier in regards to our Log in Date (LID.)
May 31, 2007 Today our agency called to tell us that our dossier is still in Vancouver being notarized. It has been reviewed, at which time they noticed that Drew was apparently only 3 feet tall....so they called to get a more accurate height description. They said it will be stamped and completed tomorrow and that it should be sent to Ottawa by this coming Friday. 21 days to be notarized! Nothing quick about this process we are learning!
June 26, 2007 We are now DTC (Dossier to China). Yeah! Our completed dossier was sent to China this morning! Now it will be translated into Chinese and we will be given our Log in Date, which officially marks our true waiting period. We hope to hear from them within a months time. Apparently the CCAA travels around the world visiting with various adoption agencies and in last months meetings it was stated that the wait could reach 2 years soon. They also stated that they have no intention of suspending international adoptions ( a rumor that we had heard a few months ago). All good news for us. We can wait two years if we have to. All in God's timing...we will bring our little girl home.
July 11, 2007 YEAH! We have received our LID of July 2, 2007! Now we have officially joined the waiting club! Lets get this line moving!
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