ACCEPTED

(Dictated by Jason)

We have completed one step of many! Our preliminary application to Children's Hope International (CHI) has been accepted!

The next step is to complete a home study. This includes an inspection of our home including interviews to determine our suitability as parents. Once the home study is complete we will be working on our Dossier (a collection of forms, certificates and paperwork). Along with our formal acceptance into CHI it is now time to start paying out large sums of money. (It is flying out the door by the thousands.)

As we begin to complete our forms we must decide what age of child or children we desire. We have been discussing adopting more than one child, perhaps a sibling group of 2-3 children from Colombia. It will definitely be a LEARNING experience to go from a family of 2 adults and 3 fur children to an very instant family full of REAL children. We will have quite a long time to prepare however since we were told it would be 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 years to receive a placement after our Dossier is accepted. That means from today it could be 3 -4 years before our adoption is realized. (This news was disheartening for me, but I'm trying to be patient.--Nicole)

(That was all Jason had to say. Now some additional details from Nicole)
When we were told about the wait the director of the program said that the wait was very unpredictable and that it seemed to be getting longer. For Colombian nationals she said couples were waiting 6 months because their applications and dossiers were sped along the fast track. They said officials in Colombia are aware of the length of the wait... no word on if anything is acutally being done to lessen it. It guess it depends on whose hands your application lands in.

This part of the process is called a race. I guess it is a race to complete and verify all documents so you can start the waiting! I am contacting The Baby Fold in Bloomington to start our homestudy and hoping that we can get started after Thanksgiving. We have packets with information for those who really want nitty gritty details we can share.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Nicole

PS. This stage feels like getting a shot. You know it is worth it but it hurts none the less.

Application sent!

We have applied!!

We are officially on our way in a formal way! Today I mailed the application, fee, and pictures to Children's Hope International. It should take about 2 weeks to process and then we'll start the official paper trail. We decided to go with Children's Hope because of their expertise in Colombian adoption which Bethany Christian Services appeared not to have. We would have been the first adoption from our area to Colombia through BCS whereas CHI (Children's Hope International) has very few programs but does each program well.

Other benefits of CHI (if you're interested):

• In-country staff, housing and hand-holding. (Someone will meet us at the airport and basically drag us around to where we need to go, there will be a place for us to stay already arranged.)
  
• Weekly updates sent to our email.
• Lower program fees.
• Personal connection and smaller agency feel.

Next on the "To Do" list will be to prepare for our homestudy and dossier... although what all that consists of is still somewhat of a mystery so I guess for now we WAIT to hear back from the agency.

Nicole

PS I didn't have a good picture, but thought this one was funny.