This piece of paper is the end of a long six month wait to be approved to adopt a baby. It is the result of the home-study, police checks, PRIDE training process that we were busy with at the beginning of this year. We are so happy that it is finally here. Although it is only one step closer, it is a pretty big step. Mission of Tears, our agency, mailed our dossier to South Africa yesterday as well which was also great news. Sometimes they don't send the dossiers right away because the South African social worker has enough waiting families already. We were hoping that our file could go immediately but were preparing for the worst. So...once our file is in South Africa, we could get a referral anytime.We do know, however, that our social worker is taking time off around Christmas so we aren't expecting anything until February at the earliest, but it could be a long wait yet. Some people with Mission of Tears have been waiting for a year. Still, it's nice to be waiting on the right side of the ocean. At least our file is (or will be very soon) in Africa.
Since we heard three weeks ago that the ministry was working on our file, the wait has been excruciating. Every time we checked email or phone messages we were anticipating the news. Finally, after reading discouraging posts in our "Families adopting from South Africa" chat group about the long wait times, we decided to do something to make our adoption seem more real. We began searching for crib bedding. And then we bought some!
We purchased it online from the U.S. through ebay, so we had it shipped to my brother Paul's family in Boston. They will bring it to us at Christmas -- it'll be a nice Christmas present.
Once we are matched with a child, we will only have three weeks before we travel to South Africa. Our agency recommends that once our dossier is in South Africa we begin to prepare for the baby. We are not planning to set up the baby room until we receive the referral, but it is exciting to start planning and preparing.
Our kids are started to get excited about the baby. Leah speaks often about her baby brother in South Africa who is "littler" than her. When Sara heard that we were approved she announced that we needed to go out for supper to celebrate. And so we did. Praise God for small steps to Africa!
