Teeny Tiny Update

There's not much to report on the adoption front.  We are waiting and waiting right now.  Our forms for immigration have all been submitted and we're just waiting on some paperwork from Korea.  At this point, we probably won't hear much until we get a lot closer to traveling.  Please pray with us that all the paperwork will get processed in a timely manner and that we can get to Korea before Ji-wan turns 1.  We'd really love to celebrate his first birthday with all our friends and family here in the US!

One quick and exciting update is that we finally picked a first name for Ji-wan:  Alexander (or Alex), so his full name will be Alexander Ji-wan Moberly.  Eli was the first to suggest the name Alex, and was very proud to be a part of the naming process :)

Q&A

Now that we know more specifics about the adoption people have asked questions, and since many questions are the same I thought I'd put up a little Q&A

Q:  Where is Ji-wan now?
A:  He is with a foster family.  Korea has a wonderful foster system, very similar to the US and is well taken care of and treated as a member of the family he is staying with!

Q:  Will you go to Korea to bring Ji-wan home?
A:  Yes, Matt and I will be traveling to Korea for a minimum of 3 days, maximum of 7 days.

Q:  When will you go to Korea?  Where will you be?
A:  We have been told its approximately 3-5 months from the time we submit our acceptance paperwork (late April for us) till we will have all of the appropriate visas and papers we need to bring Ji-wan home.  That puts us traveling between late July and late September.  We will be flying into Incheon and staying in Seoul for the entire visit.  We will be updated some as the paperwork is processed, but eventually we will receive a phone call letting us know that everything is ready and then we are given 7 days to get to Seoul!

Q:  Are you taking Eli and Anna along?
A:  We decided it would be best for all of us to leave the kids at home.  Its most likely that they will be in school when we travel, and we could not imagine dealing with all 5 of us having jet lag when we return!  It will also give us a chance to bond with Ji-wan without the chaos of two school-agers around as well :)

Q:  Will you get to do sightseeing/traveling while you are there?
A:  We will have a few days where we will be able to do some sightseeing around Seoul.  We also hope to do some shopping and bring home some souvenirs for Eli and Anna and potentially some things to give to Ji-wan as he grows up.  The crafter in me is hoping to be able to buy some fabrics and yarns there as well!

Q:  Are you going to keep Ji-wan's name?
A:  We will probably give Ji-wan an American first name, but keep his Korean name as his middle name.  It is really important for us that Ji-wan be able to maintain as much of his Korean heritage as possible!

Q:  How old will Ji-wan be when you bring him home?
A:  He will be between 9-11 months old.  We hope all will go as planned and we will be able to celebrate his first birthday in the traditional Korean style at home with his new family!

Q:  Have you guys met any other families with Korean children?
A:  We recently became a part of a group called Korean Focus Indiana (KFI) that is mainly made up of families with children of Korean heritage, but that is highly supported by the wonderful community of the Korean Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis.  We will have lots of opportunities for our whole family to learn about Korea, its history, art, culture, and language.  We already attended a picnic with this group as a family last week and met 3 families in our area who are in the process of or already have adopted children from Korea (plus we got to eat some amazing Korean foods there)!  We will be taking Eli and Anna to a Korean Culture Camp at the Presbyterian church this summer where they will have the chance to learn about modern-day Korea :)

Feel free to ask us more questions if you have them.  We are so excited to be sharing this journey with all of you and learning together more about our newest child and his culture!

Big News!

We've got some big news for you, folks, tonight Matt and I accepted the referral for a little boy... our soon-to-be little boy, Ji-Wan!  He is 5 months old, cute as can be, and we hope to travel to Korea to bring him home sometime between July and September!

Enjoy the photos - as you can imagine, we are!!!

Revisited

We recently started all of the paperwork required to update our homestudy.  After 1 year a homestudy expires and has to be revised.  Basically, its all the same paperwork and criminal history checks, etc.  Nothing exciting, but just one more step down the road!

Homestudy

We got our official copy of our new homestudy from Bethany in the mail today!  This puts us one more step closer to adoption :)

Support

Still not a lot of news on the adoption front right now.  Matt and I will be attending a seminar next month about the Korea program at Bethany.  It will be nice to meet other families who will be traveling to Korea soon to pick up their children, some of them at the same time as us! 

We have received some exciting news lately - Matt's company has decided to start a Adoption Assistance program, and we will most likely be the first family to receive the benefits from this fund.  We are very appreciative of their generosity, and look forward to sharing in this journey with Leaf.  They have been a part of our lives since before we were married (Matt's been there since college), and have seen our family grow, so it will be neat to have the adoption connected to them as well :)

If you received a Christmas letter from us this year you will have received a copy of our support letter as well.  We decided that a way to be good stewards of our money was to send the two out at once!   Some friends and family have already responded and sent prayers and financial support our way.  We are feeling truly humbled and blessed that so many of you are joining us in prayer for our child!  Thank you for continuing on this journey with us!!!

Change

Friday I posted asking you to pray.  I want to take a little time to share with you why now.  Before I start, its important for you to understand that for our adoption we are working with 2 different agencies.  Our formal adoption agency is FCA, based out of Connecticut.  They are the agency we're seeking placement through.  The second agency is Bethany Christian Services, who prepared our homestudy that was to be sent to Korea.  Our original desire was to adopt from Korea through Bethany because they are a local, Christian agency and we've had friends use them in the past and have a very positive experience.  However, their program is hard to get into as they draw a lot of families but are only allowed to place a certain number of children each year (i.e. they may have 20 families interested in adopting from Korea each year but only be allowed to place 10).  These families get chosen by a ranking system sort of based on need - families with infertility or no children get chosen first, etc - so it meant we were unlikely to get chosen into their program.  That is why we started looking out of state for an agency who didn't work the same way.  We found FCA, who had a long-standing, highly recommended program and chose to go with them, but we still needed a local agency to complete our homestudy.   So that's the background you need to know.

Late Friday afternoon I got a call from the adoption specialist who prepared our homestudy at Bethany.  She was calling with "good and bad news".  The bad news was that they had received word from FCA that the agency they work with in Korea would no longer accept a homestudy that was prepared by Bethany.  Also, because our original homestudy was prepared by Bethany, they would not be comfortable using ANY homestudy prepared for us.  Basically, the agency FCA works with in Korea would not refer us a child because we had worked with Bethany.

However, she also had good news.  The director of the Korea program at Bethany was able to find us a spot in their program.  Not only that, they would use our original homestudy date of June 3 (I think) as our application date, and therefore we wouldn't have to start our waiting all over again.

While this was exciting, it was also scary, since its not at all what we've been planning for months now.  Also, our concerns were: what was the difference in cost?, and what about the money we'd already paid to FCA?  The Bethany program is almost identical in cost to the FCA program, so we are still only going to be needing to trust God for about the same amount.  Also, I spoke with FCA today and they are refunding all of our money!  They are so disappointed and frustrated that they weren't told of this issue earlier (they had worked with Bethany in the past with no issues) and want to do whatever they can to help us complete our adoption.  While we haven't given Bethany our 100% final answer, we believe that this is now the way we're headed.  It is so amazing to see that God has provided not only the passion for our adoption, but he is breaking down all barriers to its happening, and even providing what we first desired and didn't think we could have (working through Bethany)!

Thank you for all your prayers and please keep them coming - we truly believe they are working!  God has clearly been providing for us so far and we continue to trust him with the rest of this process. 

Love to all!

Discombobulation

There's a little switching and swapping going on in our adoption realm right now.  Would you join us in praying it will all smooth out?  We'll post details as soon as we have something concrete to share!

Thank you!

Support

Below is an excerpt of the prayer and support letter we recently sent to many of our friends via email. We are working on a hard copy for family and the less technologically inclined, which we should be sending out soon. This is about the most concise explanation of why we are adopting, and why we chose South Korea to adopt from. It is written from my (Andrea's) perspective.

Dear friends

We hope this letter finds you well! As you may have heard already, Matt and I are in the process of adopting a child from South Korea. We’re writing to you today to share our adoption journey with you and to ask if you would be interested in participating with us in bringing our child into their “forever family”.

Both Matt and I have considered adoption as an open possibility since we got married. My pregnancies with Eli and Anna were very physically and emotionally difficult. We ruled out any more natural births after Anna was born, but we left the decision to grow our family further through adoption open-ended.

In November of 2008 I visited an orphanage in India for about 5 days. While there, I found it very easy to love the children and I felt the conviction that it was time to consider making steps toward adoption. At the very same time Matt began feeling emotionally prepared to start the process as well. When I returned home we had a long talk about our hopes for our family and the idea of adoption. We also met with some friends who had recently completed an international adoption and asked them all sorts of questions about the process and decision making that goes into international adoption. That next week we began the process ourselves!

Matt and I both felt a desire to adopt a child with Asian/Indian Asian heritage, and therefore took steps to determine what countries we were eligible to adopt from in this region. Since making the decision to adopt from South Korea we have learned a lot about the reasons children are put up for adoption in that country.

“Bearing a child outside of marriage brings shame to the birth mother, her child, and her immediate and extended families… When a child has no legal father, a fact easily discerned from the [mandatory] family register, both birth mother and child face social discrimination throughout their lives. In most cases they risk losing family ties and thus a social and financial safety net. They [both mother and child] may also sacrifice prospects for marriage or a sustainable livelihood.” (an excerpt from I Wish for You a Beautiful Life, Ed. Sara Dorrow).

We recognize that we are blessed as Americans to be able to give hope to a child who may have limited opportunities in their country of birth. We are already in excited preparation for the child we will bring home, and are thrilled to discover who our child will be! From this point, we are approximately a year away from bringing our child home. We know that the child will have a heritage and a history that we hope to be able to teach to them as they grow. We are looking forward to bringing Korean culture to our family. This will not only benefit our adopted child, but also allow our entire family to have a better understanding of the world. We are excited for the chance to provide a future of love, hope, and opportunity for the child we will adopt!

Because of the nature of international adoption, there are many people involved both in the United States and in the adoptive country. This in combination with all of the governmental and miscellaneous fees makes international adoption quite expensive. We are fully convinced that God will provide the funds we need to adopt a child, and ask that you would prayerfully consider joining us in this venture. You will not only be making an investment in our family, but an eternal investment into the life of a child who might otherwise not have the same opportunity for love and freedom.

*We think it will be an amazing testimony to our child to share with him or her the love and faith that was surrounding the entire process of their adoption. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or want to know more about the adoption!

With love,

Matt and Andrea Moberly

As stated in the letter, we'd love to hear from you if you want more adoption info or have any questions. We are thrilled to be sharing this experience with all of you and appreciate the all support we've already been receiving to this point!

* Some information (mailing address, etc) was removed to protect our family's privacy.

Fingerprints

Matt and I took the kids +1 (our nephew) downtown to the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday to get our fingerprints taken. This is the last governmental hoop to jump through prior to traveling to Korea, so yay! That is assuming our fingerprint results show no criminal activity, which I think is 100% likely :)