Today we have been officially waiting for you for two months! We are praising God that we are two months closer to seeing your sweet face! We are praying for you, little one! Praying that you are healthy and loved and safe. If only you could know how truly loved you are by your family on the other side of the world. We can't wait for the day we find out who you are and can pray for you by name and put a face with that name. The face of our child. I can close my eyes and sometimes I can almost already see you. I see you toddling around the field at Brody's soccer games. I see you running around with the other kids at Sunday lunches at Mamaw and Papaw's. I see you holding Daddy's hand as we walk into church. I long for the day we get that phone call letting us know we've been matched with you. God already knows. I can't wait to watch His amazing plan unfold! You are SO special, sweet child. And you've got a whole lot of people praying for you and waiting for you!
Love, Mommy
So, here we are...celebrating 2 months on the wait list. Not a whole lot has changed since my last update. We did receive our 1-600A approval in the mail this week, so that's great news! Good to know we've got nice clean fingerprints! ;) Now, we just wait. There's really nothing more we can file with USCIS until we have our referral. And speaking of our referral, I want to take just a minute to clear up a few things that people have had questions about. Sometimes I use words like "referral" and just assume everyone knows what that is. But just because we've been studying adoption for months and months, that doesn't mean anyone else has. :) The word referral is actually referring to a child. When our agency (Dillon) receives the information on a child that is ready to be matched with their forever family, they go to their list of waiting families. There are lots of factors that determine which family gets matched with the child (how long they've been waiting, conditions they are open to, etc), but I know they put lots of prayer into it. I do want to mention how thankful I am for the hearts of these wonderful people who work tirelessly to help us bring our children home. They truly feel like family, and I can't imagine going through this without such a close knit, intimate agency and group of people. So, like I've said before, they've told us to expect to wait 4-6 months for our referral (hopefully only 2-4 more to go!). When this happens, our social worker will call us, letting us know we've been matched. Eek! I have pictured this moment over and over in my mind, and I just can't even begin to imagine how it will feel. How exciting it will be. She will give us our child's age (we expect baby to be 6-8 months old at this time), Korean name, will go over medical information and background information with us, and then will email us pictures!! We definitely want to do something fun to announce our referral and share his pictures with family and friends, but I just haven't figured out how or what yet. If you have any ideas, please share!! :)
We have been asked a lot if this means that our baby will be ready to come home. Oh, how I wish it did. Unfortunately, we've been told to expect to wait approximately another year before we can travel to pick baby up. We are so thankful that our child will be living with a foster family rather than in an orphanage while we wait for travel. That is so reassuring. To know how loved he will be. From what I understand, the main reason for this wait is that the government in Korea only allows a certain number of orphans to leave the country each year. Why? I think it has to do with them trying to promote more domestic (in-country) adoption there in Korea. So, due to this limited number of EP's, or Exit Permits, that the government allows each year, cases stay really backed up. They have also passed several new laws recently regarding adoption, which require additional steps to the Korean end of the process, holding the process up even more. So, it's usually close to a year before everything is in place for us to travel to bring our baby home.
Clear as mud?? Thought so. It's still hard for me to understand. But right now, I know we are two months closer, so praise God!!
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