Classes 2 and 3 DONE!!!

Hooray! We had our last pre-home study class today. It is good to have those all done. Now we will be scheduling our first of three home study visits. I believe the first 2 are at the agency and the last one will be in our home. We are excited to get all this done so that we can concentrate on our dossier, which is going to be the biggest headache of this whole process.
We have already ordered our vital records, which was a difficult and not quite completed task (as well as very expensive! Who would have thought!). After we receive the actual documents we have to send them back into the Secretary of State (of whichever state they are from) and have them authenticated and sent back to us. Apart from these vital records there is LOADS of other legal documents that we will need to gather, medical exams, police reports and fingerprints... I am feeling very overwhelmed. There are many times when I wonder if this is really worth it. I am continually reminded of passages in the Bible that tell me "this life will not be easy" and that I am called to reach out to the "least of these". We know the Lord has us on this journey for a reason, and we trust that he will mold us and shape us even more into his image through this process.

Thank you for going on this journey with us! We love you guys!

Continue to pray for us and with us:
*Pray for perseverance, that we will not be discouraged but that we would trust the Lord to be our strength
*Pray that we are able to gather the appropriate documents quickly and efficiently
*Pray for our future child/ren, that the Lord would be preparing them for this adjustment
*Pray for our family as we travel on this road, that we would be ready to accept these new children with love and joy and patience

First class down, 2 to go!

We spent 8 hours at Children's Home and Aid today. In Illinois you are required to be a licensed foster home before you can adopt. In order to become a licensed foster home you are required to have 10 hours of training. Today was our first class and it was 8 hours long! Crazy! We learned all about the different psychological issues of adopted children and while I am sure some of them are true, I am thankful that I know Jesus Christ and the redeeming work he can do in hearts. He is the true healer and relationship mender and a Father to the fatherless. We were able to take a stand a few times and share what we believe and why it was different than what they were teaching. We pray God uses us even in this group to glorify his name.
We will have two more classes, this coming Friday and then the Friday after that. When these classes are done our paper work is submitted to the state and we become an approved foster home. Once that is in place we can then schedule our home studies. Our home studies will consist of 3 meetings. 2 will be at Children's Home and Aid and the final one will be in our home. When those are done all the paper work is submitted for our approval to adopt. It's a long process and I have never seen so much paper work in my life!

Prayer:
*I think the biggest thing we would like prayer for right now is that the Lord would be preparing the hearts of the child/children that he has for us. That the transition would be smooth and that we all would adjust well.
*Please pray for us as we continue to build relationships with these other couples that were in the class. Pray that the Lord would use us to shine a light into their lives and that he would be glorified.
*Continue to pray that the paper work comes together smoothly.

Paper work, paper work and more paper work...

We had our meeting! It was great, the Lord really went before us in the assigning of our home study agent... We feel very blessed and that the Lord is walking right beside us on the adventure. We have a lot of paper work to fill out and information to gather and are feeling a little overwhelmed. There is a lot to do! But we are still very excited!

Prayer:
*That the Lord continues to go before us and we are sensitive to His leading.
*Pray that we would be able to find all that we need as far as legal documents and that they would be processed quickly.
*Pray we continue to trust the Lord to lead and direct our steps and that we would be a testimony to him all along the way.
*Pray for the children the Lord has for us, that he would be preparing them even now!
*Pray for our own kids that they would adjust well.