Fundraisers & Donations: I'm talking about this first because it's just beautiful. More than beautiful, actually! Friends, God is moving in so many hearts and so many of you have chosen to come alongside us and support us on this journey. I'm overwhelmed. I'm speechless. I'm in awe of all of this love...some of it from complete strangers! I can't wait to see these awesome t-shirts on everyone as soon as we get them passed out. Would you do us a favor...please post a picture of you and your family to my facebook page or email it to me at jmalcoleman at gmail dot com...we'd love to see it!! We still have a ways to go, but oh my goodness - I just can't help but be reminded of this verse..."Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us." Ephesians 3:20 God is so very good, my friends...He loves, He calls, He provides....
Paperwork: Yeah, we're still working on it :) But it's moving along!!
We passed!! The FBI has officially declared that we are not on their Ten Most Wanted List...or any list for that matter...and we can adopt a child. Yay! We also received Louisiana state clearance stating that we're not criminals...so, yay, again! And the State of Tennessee has declared that we were never child abusers, so we passed that clearance, too! Still have to do Louisiana's, but that shouldn't take too long. Seriously, though, it's so awesome because our FBI clearances came back in less than a month...they told us to expect it to take at least 8 - 9 weeks! Like I said, God is so very, very good...
Psychological Evals: We had our psyc evals a few weeks ago. This is mainly why my brain is so mushy. We both had to talk to the psychologist for an hour and then take one of those thousand-question tests. No, there weren't really 1,000 questions...there were only 567. Then there were two shorter "quizzes" with brain teasers on them, one of which made me feel like an idiot. Ha!! We will go back in a couple of weeks and she will go over the results with us and show us just what she will send in for our home study.
Timeline: I've had several people ask me lately what kind of timeline we are looking at. Our social worker said we are on track to have our dossier submitted in late August/early September. At that point, our dossier will be sent to Colombia where it will be translated, we will most likely be asked for more information on something somewhere in the stack of papers, we'll provide the information, then we'll be approved...probably between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Bring on the holidays!!! Once we're approved, we wait. For how long...we have no idea. The average timeframe from adoption application submission to our agency (which we did in January) to stepping off the plane with our little boy (which we can't wait to do) is 18-24 months. But that can change. That's the thing with adoption...everything is "on average". But, really, it's all in God's perfect timing and we really have no idea.
Home Study: Our home study social worker will arrive at our house on Thursday and we will spend the next 3 days with her. She will interview us together, separately, observe our kids (maybe talk to AB), do a home inspection, and do a little bit of adoption education with us. Then she'll leave and go write everything up over the next couple of weeks. We are hoping to be home study approved by late May. Whoa...just realized that's only 6 weeks away!! In all seriousness, please, please pray for us for these next few days. It's already been a tough week. Pray that we would be fully focused for the next few days, that we would not grow weary, and that we would not be anxious about anything.
That really about sums it up for now. We have a couple of more fundraisers coming up in the next few weeks, one of them being our awesome cookbook my mom's put together with the OVER 400 recipes y'all have submitted! I can't wait to
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