Surprises and Deadlines

The past month or so has been full of surprises.  Ok, just one really, but it's big enough to fill up a whole month!

Let me back up.  One of the ... interesting? surprising? unsettling? ... things that we learned as we meticulously went over our adoption agency contracts with our case worker several months ago was that if we happened to get pregnant at any point during our adoption, the adoption would be terminated ... not put on hold, no refunds, nothing.  It would just be over.  It wasn't that we didn't want to have another baby ... but we want so much for this adoption to happen as quickly as possible.  The idea of having to start all over was, quite frankly, pretty scary.  We actually stopped and thought about and prayed about changing to a different agency, but believing that God had led us to AGCI specifically, we decided to just trust Him to take care of things.

Well ... early in September, our agency announced that they revised their policy.  The new policy states that in the case of pregnancy, they will put an adoption on hold for up to 12 months.  Or in the case of a lengthy adoption ... like ours ... the adoption would continue as normal.  The only stipulation is that there are at least 10 months between the youngest child in the family and the adopted child.

Well, God has incredible timing!  And if we ever wondered if His hand was in all of this, we wouldn't now.  We found out early this month that we are expecting our third baby on June 3rd!

So ... they announced the policy change 7 weeks ago, and I am 9 weeks pregnant.  Coincidence?  I don't think so.  And as far as AGCI's requirements, at the end of our 24-month-ish waiting list time, this baby should be about 17 months old.  Perfect timing!

For those of you who have know us for a while, you might know how crazy this is.  We were married almost five years before we had Connor and had to wait quite a while for Hayley, too.  I had many months of tears as we waited for each of them.  So for God to surprise us with this little blessing is just about more than I can take in.  We are so excited and so thankful!

As far as the specifics on the adoption, we are in the final couple of days before our November 2nd deadline to turn in our dossier!

We have several more pieces of paperwork to get done before then, but most of them shouldn't be too difficult to get finished.  The only ones that are a little unnerving are getting our local criminal background checks done and getting the finalized home study.

We were supposed to have the home study already in hand, but the agency has asked for several revisions, the (hopefully) last of which Cole sent the information for to our social worker this morning.  He will still have to make the changes and get approval from AGCI.  Then we will have to get the finalized and notarized copy from him before we can send in our USCIS I600A application that I talked about in the last post.  Then that's the last piece we will need for the dossier ... the receipt saying we sent in the application.  It's a lot to get done in two days, but I know it's possible.

And no, we aren't criminals. :)  But getting a criminal background check is harder than I would have thought.  There are very specific requirements that have to be met that the police station isn't used to having to deal with.  And we've run into a couple of snags with getting them notarized, etc.

If you are willing, we would ask that you would pray with us through these last couple of days.  Here are some specific requests:

1)  That Brad (our social worker) would be able to get the revisions done and that AGCI would approve the home study in the next day or so.

2)  That we would be able to communicate well with the police department as we go to get the criminal background checks this afternoon and that they would be understanding and that all the required people would be there.

3)  That God would provide the rest of the money we still need to be able to send in with the dossier.

4)  Praise God with us for wonderful surprises and precious babies!

We're very excited that we're getting so close!  I'll keep you guys updated as things wind down for this phase in our adventure.

Have a very blessed day!

Dawn