In the Waiting Pool & "Live"!

We last checked in in mid-October, when we were making good progress on our home study. Since that time, we're happy to say that we completed the home study and are now officially in the waiting pool once more!

After we turned in all our paperwork in October, we met with our social worker two times in November and once in December, all at our house. As happened before, one of the meetings was us split up talking with her, and the other two were us together (and Zelie, too). As expected, all the meetings went really well. We really like our social worker and it was exciting to update her on the changes in our family since adopting Zelie, and to look ahead at our hopeful second adoption.

After those meetings were done, we had to wait for our social worker to write up her official report. We received a copy shortly after Christmas, had just one minor factual edit, and then it was approved by Barker on January 4, 2019 (Bethany's confirmation saint day - Elizabeth Ann Seton). At that point we were officially approved to adopt, whenever a situation comes together and a match happens!

But we had a few more things to do to officially get into the waiting pool with Open Door down in Georgia. They had already contacted all six of their required references. Our home study and supporting documentation had to be sent from Barker to Open Door, we had to sign some commitment forms with them, and we had to fill out a form about what parameters (age, race, medical background and so on) we were open to - similar to what we did as part of our home study. We mailed all of our forms off in mid-January, and received word on January 23rd that Open Door had everything they needed from us, so we were officially in the waiting pool.

We will be setting up an online profile on Open Door's websites, and whenever they are working with an expectant mom who is looking for a family like ours, our book will be shown. We won't be notified about that unless there are some "gray area" situations that we wanted to have more information about prior to showing our book.

We are so excited to be at this stage!! We pray every day for our future son or daughter, and for the men and women who are in difficult situations and figuring out what to do. We trust that this is all in God's hands! Please pray for us!