Lots of good news!!

We just got another new picture of Henry on Wednesday. We have definitely been blessed to receive so many! Even though I was excited to get this new picture ( he just so cute!!!), I was bummed that we got that instead of news about him coming home. This has been such a long, hard week. It was the last week of school for me, which is always crazy. Have any non-teachers ever stopped and thought about what 22 9 year olds are like on the last day of school? ;) Besides all of that, my mom was in the hospital all week. I won't go into all of the specifics, but she has many health issues that she has to face everyday, so prayers for her would be appreciated. She was very down about having to stay in the hospital, undergoing many procedures and still having the doctors not know what's causing some of her health problems. But when we brought in this new photo of Henry, she brightened up right away and was showing him off to all of the hospital staff who walked in the door. I know that is further proof of God's work in this adoption. Here is the picture of my 10 month old son:



Then on Friday, it was a teacher workday so that we could pack away all of our classroom materials for summer. At my district, this means packing everything up and storing it. Basically it's like packing and moving your house! Elementary teachers have lots of "things." In the midst of all of this hard work, I received a call that I have been WAITING for!! Nope, not his travel call, but it was from our agency telling us that Henry had his visa physical exam. The doctor noted that he has a "right ear deformity" on his paperwork, which means we have to sign a Class B Waiver. All that means is that we are officially aware that he has a problem with his ear. Our agency emailed us the waiver to sign. We had to get 4 copies of it notarized and then overnight FedEx it back to them Friday. Possibly on Mon or Tues the agency will send the waiver to Korea. Once there it takes "about 5 business days" for them to submit for his travel visa. Add to that the time needed for them to find an escort to bring him here, book the flight, etc....so we are likely looking at him coming home mid-to-late June. That is longer that I had been hoping for, but right now I'm feeling extremely happy to know that he's almost here. I'm looking at these next couple of weeks without him as a chance to enjoy my last moments of freedom before mommyhood! Summer is here and I can spend these upcoming days doing whatever I please. I plan to enjoy them!
Last but not least, we had a huge yard sale at my school yesterday as a fundraiser towards our adoption. Lots of staff members pitched in to help by donating items for the sale, and several people came to help set up and clean up (thank you SO much Eva, Susan, Wezie, Rachel, Yodit, Jeannie, and Dennis C.). A select few stayed ALL day with us in the HOT sun. (I love you and thanks again to Jennifer, Sherri, Kathy, and Michelle!!!!) We worked hard, got sunburned and sweaty, but it was so worth it! The yard sale brought us very close to $900! Add that to the jewelry fundraiser that we just had and we are over $1,000 raised this week! Amazing....

Blessings

We have an earlier post about our worries about affording this adoption. I will say that when we first began this process, James was very concerned about the financial aspect (it truly is incredibly expensive), but I wasn't focused on that. I had a sense of peace that it would all come together somehow if this was God's plan for us. That sense of peace was shaken, however, when 5 banks refused to loan us anything towards this adoption despite our good credit scores and good income/debt ratio. We both began to panic, realizing that our agency would not let our precious boy come home until we have paid all of the fees. I am happy to report that major progress has been made lately in regards to this! First of all, our agency awarded us a $2,000 SNAF (special needs assistance fund) grant. Also, a local credit union gave us a $6,000 low-interest rate loan. And then, best of all, a foundation called A Child Waits awarded us a $4,000 grant due to Henry's needs. All of this, combined with what we have already paid, puts us very close to the fees due. We are only about $5,000 away, which is still quite a bit, but completely do-able compared to where we started!
I would also like to say that throughout our marriage, James and I have realized that God's plan unfolds in miraculous ways! He has placed some very special people in our lives--my entire fellow teaching staff has been incredibly supportive of our adoption journey. They bought hundreds of baked goods to help us pay for our homestudy, have rejoiced in our happiness (certain people check on me every day), and now they are going to host 2 more fundraisers for us. One of them was thought of by my dear friends on my 3rd grade team: It will be a big staff yard sale sponsored by PTA that will be held at our school on June 6. I'm very excited about this!
The other fundraiser was thought of by the sweet Speech teacher at my school. She sells Premier Jewelry and is going to have a show this Tuesday for the staff where a portion of profit will go to us. I am just in awe of our many blessings.

"And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He hears us: and if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him." 1 John 5:14,15

Yay! Homestudy is done! by Mary

Good news! Our homestudy is complete and was sent to the Holt USA office on Friday. They will review it and then send it on to Holt Korea. Once that happens, we will officially be "waiting." In the meantime, James and I have to complete the USCIS immigration paperwork. Apparently this can be a lengthy, annoying process. On the Holt discussion boards there have been several postings complaining about the Dallas USCIS office. Hopefully things will go smoothly for us! Another bit of good news is that our Heart and Seoul holiday bake sales earned us enough money to pay to file for the USCIS paperwork, plus more that will go towards paying for our homestudy.

Right now James is in the kitchen making 8 dozen homemade cinnamon rolls that were purchased by my school's PTA president to give to the teachers at my school tomorrow. Have I mentioned that the PTA president, James Atwood, is a really awesome guy? His adorable wife, Michelle, who teaches kindergarten at my school is also really great. Not only have they helped us out by generously supporting our Heart and Seoul baking efforts, but they also are sponsoring our Heart and Seoul website. Plus, they are having us over for dinner tomorrow night, too!

One last thing: I'm trying not to get my hopes up or dwell upon it, but yesterday we spotted a couple of new additions to the Holt waiting child photo listing that we are very interested in. Both are baby boys who have some correctable special needs. I won't go into details at this time about them, but my heart was racing as I studied their profiles yesterday. They are SOOO cute! Since they are on the photo listing and have not been referred to us, the process is a little different. We have to let Holt know that we would like to be considered to adopt them, and then it goes to a committee that selects the couple they think is the best match for the baby. I'm sure there will be many families who are interested in those precious boys (which is good). James and I are praying that if one of them is meant to be ours that it will work out. It's a little funny to think about getting a boy b/c in our minds somehow we have been stuck on adopting a girl. However, one look at the WC photolisting and it's clear that more boys are in need of adoption, so that comforts us.

Wonderful Christmas by James

I've got a lot to write, but I'll try to make this quick. After a wonderful Christmas Day with Mary's family, we are going to another "Christmas" at my dad's house in Eastland today.

We finished both of our meetings with our social worker, Kristin, last weekend. She is a very kind person, and we think that she will be great to work with. She had long conversations with us about parenting, adopting, and our own childhoods. She also checked to make sure that the home environment is safe for children. Although we passed many tests, including having a bathroom, running water, and food, we were surprised to learn that a medicine cabinet above a sink is not sufficient to keep medicine away from a child. We actually have to put them so far out of reach that Mary can't even reach them, or else lock them in a box. We think that is very funny.

Other than that, everything seemed to go well, and Kristin will be writing up the report and giving us a copy to review at the start of the new year. After that, we will need to attend a few classes on easing the transition for our adopted child, hopefully by the end of January, and then the homestudy will be sent to South Korea. At that point our wait time officially begins, and it could be up to a year before we get a referral for a child, and then another 6-8 months before we are able to travel to get him/her.

The timing of the travel is important, and something that we are thinking and praying seriously about. I'll post more on that later.

On the very, very bright side, we have finished all of the baking for the holidays, and although I haven't run the numbers officially yet, I think we did pretty well. We have been so blessed by the generosity of all of our friends and family, many of whom have given very generously in support of bringing our yet unknown baby home. To them, we can not express our gratitude enough.

As many people may know, Mary and I decided a few months ago not to give many gifts this holiday season in order to continue to save for our adoption. The deal we made with our family was that we weren't going to buy for them, and so they can't buy for us. Otherwise, it would make us feel terrible. It turned out to be much harder to do than we initially thought. It has been especially difficult because we enjoy so much finding gifts for our friends and family members. Mary still feels like we should go out and get something. She just asked me again for the 100th time if I think we should go ahead and give presents.

We did buy gifts for Mary's mom because she doesn't really have many other people to celebrate Christmas with. And we didn't want to deprive her of the joy she has in giving gifts. Sylvia is truly one of the most generous people we know, and looks forward to birthdays and Christmas so much for the chance to give gifts. In the end, we did also give each other some small stuff for our stockings. So, it still felt like Christmas.

As a side note, and a conclusion as I wrap this up so that I can get ready to leave for my dad's house, I've kind of lingered on about the gift exchange, but I think that this Christmas we have felt the presence of Christ more than ever before. We went to the candlelight Christmas service at church this year, and I can say that we were both very moved. We know that it is in God's plan for us to adopt our baby. Just as He blessed Mary with the infant Christ, He will will bless my Mary with the baby she is meant to have. We keep faith in that at the end of this long and sometimes harrowing experience, we will experience the joy of parenthood that is in His plan.

Here we go again... (by James)

So, after many, many long hours, Mary and I were able to just barely make our deadline for the baked goods for Thanksgiving. I think the menu we chose was a bit ambitious. I don't believe in taking shortcuts, so we used only name-brand, premium ingredients, and made everything from scratch, including the pie crusts. We literally baked non-stop for over 36 hours. But, when everthing was said and done, with the generous support of our friends we were blessed with making in profit almost half of the emigration fees that were our goal. We are and will always be grateful to those who have supported us in this sometimes overwhelming endeavor.

And...so...here we are again. It seems like only yesterday we were compiling our 20+ page homestudy application and now we have our first appointment with our social worker. Her name is Kristin, and she seems very nice. Now, we are officially very nervous. Our first meeting will be on Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 7:00 p.m. I am confident that everything will be fine, but when someone prefaces a meeting by sending you two pages of things that must be in place before they arrive, it does give you some anxiety. With things progressing, I think it kind of woke us up to the fact that we need to get our emigration stuff going as soon as possible. On the adoption boards, it seems that sometimes it takes acts of Congress to get the paperwork approved, and we don't want any more delays than necessary.

Today we passed out flyers for another bake sale. This time, I will be off work for the week ahead of time, so I will have more time to prepare and plan out a schedule to get everything made on time. Its exhausting to think about it right now, but we are getting excited about it again. We picked a more modest menu that will be a little easier on us. Hopefully, we will be able achieve the same success as we had before and will reach our goal of filing for the paperwork to bring our baby home.

We did also decide recently to apply for the Holt Waiting Child Program. The WC Program is a special program at Holt that helps children who are more difficult to place in homes. It includes sibling groups, older children, and children with special needs. This was not an easy decision for us. To begin with, we had to answer an awful questionnaire about the conditions we were willing to accept for a Waiting Child. It was heartbreaking for both of us to go down the list and say, basically, "Yes, a deaf child is fine, but not a child with cerebral palsy." That is just an example, and not necessarily what we decided on. Each choice felt like a judgement, and we both struggled with those calls. The most interesting part about it, though, was that it forced us to really consider each outcome. Obviously, nothing is certain, and any child could develop any kind of disability, just as a biological child could be born with a special need of some sort. We just pray, as we have been praying, that God gives us the child who is meant to be ours.

Our Fundraiser

Lately we've been working on completing all of our homestudy paperwork. There was A LOT of it, but thankfully we are pretty much done. We will be mailing it off this week in a giant envelope! There are some expenses coming up that we have been nervous about. One thing is that we will have to pay around $3,000 for the homestudy fee, and another is that we have to pay over $800 to USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), which is a crucial step that will get the ball rolling on the citizenship for our baby.

Since we felt called to adopt so suddenly, we really had nothing saved up ahead of time. So, we were brainstorming ways that we could earn some extra cash to help pay for this early portion of money due (oh believe me there will be MUCH more coming up!). James loves to bake and has been making cakes and cookies our coworkers ever since we started working. He's talented at it, partially because he loves sweets so much, and also because he's a PERFECTIONIST! And since I am also a perfectionist and have always been very entrepreneurial myself, I had the idea to start the Heart and Seoul bakery fundraiser. We have a menu of some really yummy treats perfect for Thanksgiving, and we are taking holiday orders from people we know. If it goes well, then we'll do a different menu for Christmas. So far we've had a great response! We are going to be extremely busy getting all of these orders ready, but we aren't afraid of a little hard work. I am so excited that we have a way to show off our talents and earn money to help with the adoption at the same time!