9 months - The amount of time it takes to have a baby and also the amount of time it has taken us so far to complete our home study. I was hoping this post was going to be one of excitement and joy at being able to share the news that it is finally complete. This is not the case, however. We had to meet with our social worker one more time on Monday because of the new Hague rules. It wouldn’t have been too bad if her office wasn’t an hour+ away and if we could have found someone to watch the kids. Luckily for us the meeting didn’t last too long and the kids behaved pretty well. Our social worker told us that in her 20 years of doing adoptions ours has been her most difficult. She said that our agency was still working on getting a letter from the Philippines for the child abuse clearance portion for the USCIS, but that they are unsure if the USCIS will accept it because some other agencies are telling their clients to get the NBI clearance done. I had a feeling it was going to turn out this way and should have just gone with my gut instinct to begin with and worked on getting the NBI despite what our agency told us. Our social worker told us to go ahead and just try to get it done just in case, after they get this mess sorted out, that we end up needing it after all. I hate feeling like everything is out of our hands, so at least now it can feel like we are doing something other than waiting around for our agency, ICAB, and USCIS to make some decisions. Jason is also going to attach to the USCIS form the letter he received from his mission president when he was released which states that he served an honorable mission while in the Philippines. We are hoping that, along with our attempts to get the NBI clearance, it will be enough to get our I-800 form approved with the USCIS and get scheduled for fingerprinting.
Another bit of frustrating news from our social worker was that, because our home study has taken so long to complete, we have to redo a lot of things that have expired. At the time our home study is submitted, our state criminal and child abuse checks can be no longer than 3 months old and the FBI check can be no longer than 6 months old. Most people finish their home study within 1-2 months, so I don’t think our social worker even thought about these things. It has been well over those time frames and this is the first we have heard about it. The Washington checks are pretty easy and come back within just a couple days, so we have those finished already. For the FBI check we had to go and get fingerprinted again at the police station and then get a certified check to mail off with our request. That could take a couple weeks or more to get back. We had a pretty stressful day yesterday trying to get everything done. Jason has been working tons of overtime, so this was the last weekend we had available for probably the rest of the summer. To make things more stressful, we also decided we needed to get the girls a bunk bed after Eva slept so much better, during our trip last week, on a bigger bed. Somehow we managed to get everything done, even with me forgetting my license at home and not realizing it until we got to the Everett Police Department 2 hours before they closed, and then having to drive all the way back to Lake Stevens, during the worst traffic time of day, to get it and then all the way back to Everett again. We ended up getting two sets of fingerprints done for each of us, because we also learned from our social worker that our home study has to be updated every year since we are adopting from the Philippines. We could have gotten a couple more sets, but in a couple years it might be nice to do it again to help us feel like we are doing something other than just waiting.
The other big thing we did this weekend was to get our Dossier finished and mailed off to our agency. Most people submit this after their home study is finished, but we figured since it was done we might as well send it off and find out if we are missing anything. I guess they will just have to hold on to it until our home study is finished, whenever that will be. I am kind of getting use to all of the setbacks now, so nothing really surprises me anymore. I’m sure there will be something else, but at least we know we are in good hands and the Lord knows what He is doing. I know one day I will look back on everything He has put us through and finally understand the reasons. I think if we had known how hard this was going to be from the beginning that we would not have done it. That is probably why we were into this too deep to get out of by the time we found out that all the odds were against us.
No comments:
Post a Comment