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!
We got our official copy of our new homestudy from Bethany in the mail today! This puts us one more step closer to adoption :)
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!!!
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!
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!
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.
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 :)
I got confirmation yesterday that our paperwork has indeed left for South Korea (on 7/23)! For me, this feels almost like the positive pregnancy test :) The expected wait time for a referral is up to 9 months at this point, so unfortunately we're looking at a longer wait than we were hoping for. However, this is always subject to change, so who really knows?! We are almost done with our support letter, and will be sending that out soon. We are so thrilled to finally be in the "wait" stage!
There's nothing much to report right now on the adoption front! We are still waiting for our paperwork to be sent to Korea. We got a few things in a little late and had to wait till August for it to go. Right now we're pretty focused on enjoying the last few weeks of summer and getting geared up for school to begin next week! Please continue to pray with us for smooth sailing with all the paperwork!
