I cannot believe how much time has gone by since we started this adoption journey. It has already been a year. I cannot believe everything that has happened to delay this whole process. I never would have thought that it would have taken us an entire year to complete this stage in our adoption journey. It is not humanly possible for so many things to go wrong. It is very obvious to us that the Lord’s hands have been involved from the very beginning. We know He has a plan for us to bring our children home, even though at times it is very difficult to understand why things must happen the way they do. I have definitely learned to be patient throughout this past year and to just take things a step at a time. I decided to create a timeline of our adoption so far. I know I already have everything written down, but it was very interesting to see it all put together on the same page. There were a lot of things I had forgotten about. Here it is for those who are interested(if not skip down to the bottom for some really great news):
Our Adoption Timeline
10/26/07 - First contacted Wide Horizon's For Children(WHFC) and our social
worker, JoAnn from All God's Children.
11/07/07 - JoAnn received our initial contract and deposit and said Portland
would send our Home Study Binder that week.
11/19/07 - Never received the Binder, so JoAnn sent in a second request to
their main office.
11/26/07 - Still had not received the Binder. We called the Portland office to
find out where it was, only to find out they had not sent it yet.
11/28/07 - Finally received the Binder and could start the paperwork.
11/29/07 - Started internet adoption classes.
01/23/08 - Finished personal profiles, adoption classes, and all paperwork
needed, but still waiting on guardianship statement and references.
01/28/08 - Figured out that the guardianship statement from my brother and
reference letters from two people had gotten lost in the mail.
02/04/08 - Found out that our religion would cause difficulties and may delay us
in getting a referral from the Philippines.
02/06/08 - Met with JoAnn for interviews at her office.
03/03/08 - Met with JoAnn at our home for the home visit, still missing 3
references.
03/29/08 - Still missing 3 references, so JoAnn sent us 3 new forms to give to
3 new people. Our Home Study was complete except for these
forms. We did finally receive the guardianship statement after my
brother got it sent back to him, even though the address was
correct, and he then resent it.
04/03/08 - JoAnn received the reference letter from Jason's mom, we later
found out that she thought it was mailed, but it had slipped between
the seat of her car and she found it a couple of weeks later and
mailed it then.
04/21/08 - Last 2 references still missing. One of them had made copies and
had mailed it in a total of 3 times, none of which ever arrived. The
other did not make copies and was taking too long to redo his. At
this point we had given 2 new forms to 2 additional people.
05/03/08 - JoAnn had finally received all letters and finished the first draft of
our home study.
05/13/08 - We found out from WHFC that starting April 1st the Philippines
became a Hague country and that our home study must be changed
to meet the new guidelines.
05/22/08 - Found out we needed to get child abuse clearances from every state
and country we lived in since the age of 18.
06/05/08 - Received a call from WHFC to explain to us how difficult it would be
for us to get a referral not only because of our religion, but also
because of Jason's history of depression. They said it may take up
to 3 years for us and tried talking us into going with a different
country program or domestic adoption.
06/10/08 - Sent off clearance requests to all of the states we lived in, and
figured out how to get the NBI clearance from the Philippines.
06/16/08 - We were told by WHFC not to get the NBI clearance done, because
it was not actually a child abuse clearance. They were getting a
letter from ICAB stating that there was no child abuse registry in
the Philippines.
06/29/08 - JoAnn informed us that our Washington State background checks
and child abuse clearances needed to be redone since they were over
3 months old.
07/07/08 - Met with JoAnn again at her office in order to comply with the new
hague guidelines.
07/08/08 - Finished our Dossier and mailed it off to WHFC.
07/16/08 - After asking WHFC about the letter from ICAB for the Philippine
child abuse registry, we were told that the USCIS was not accepting
the letter at that time and were asking for the NBI clearance.
07/21/08 - We took a trip to the Philippine Consulate in Canada in order to get
the NBI clearance application taken care of and mailed off to Manila.
07/22/08 - Found out that we needed to get our FBI clearances redone and also
our medicals since they could be no more than 6 months old at the
time the home study was submitted.
07/25/08 - Our doctor redid our medicals and did not charge us for them.
07/29/08 - Found out we needed to update our tax information with our 2007
tax sheet. JoAnn also informed us that she just received new
guidelines on how to write up a Hague compliant home study and
would need to rewrite our entire home study again.
08/13/08 - JoAnn informed us that we would need a letter from Jason's
previous counselor stating that he was now in a good state of health
and that she would recommend him to adopt.
08/18/08 - Our home study was finally finished and approved.
08/25/08 - We were told by WHFC not to send them our home study yet for
our dossier, and that we needed to wait until we had received our
I-800a approval from the USCIS.
08/27/08 - Received a letter from Manila requesting additional information for
the NBI clearance.
08/29/08 - Sent in our I-800a application to the USCIS only to get it back in
the mail a week later because we had written the check out for $10
over the amount required and had to resubmit the entire thing again.
09/13/08 - Found out from my Yahoo adoption group that we did not need to
wait for I-800a approval before submitting our dossier. WHFC
agreed to let us send them our home study to review and then would
send our dossier to the Philippines.
09/23/08 - Received Jason's NBI clearance and fingerprint appointments for
the I-800a applications.
10/01/08 - Went to the USCIS offices in Seattle for our fingerprinting.
10/02/08 - Emailed WHFC to find out if our dossier had been sent.
10/07/08 - Received an email from our caseworker at WHFC saying that she
needed our medicals, which meant that she was just starting to
review our home study. I replied with a reminder that we had sent
those in 3 months ago with our dossier and she would need to get
them from the Philippine program coordinator like I told her 3
months ago to do.
10/16/08 - Our home study was finally finished being reviewed and sent on to
the Philippine program assistant.
10/20/08 - Sent an email to the Philippine program director to see if our dossier
had been sent and got a reply that it would be sent out the next day.
10/23/08 - Emailed again to see if our dossier had been sent after not hearing
anything.
10/27/08 - Still no response, so we called and left a message and sent another
email.
10/28/08 - Finally got a call that our dossier had been mailed off that day.
Yes, you read that correctly, our dossier has finally been mailed off to the Philippines. I cannot tell you how excited we are, not to mention how relieved we are. Now we will have to wait for ICAB(Inter Country Adoption Board-the board in the Philippines that all adoptions must go through) approval and then we will officially be on the waiting list for a referral. ICAB approval usually only takes about 6-8 weeks, but I’m sure that ours will be much longer based on the fact that everything has taken much longer for us. Maybe we will be surprised and get a special Christmas present this year, but I am definitely not counting on it. I will be happy if we have approval by the end of January.
