First Home Study Meeting

We met with Holly, our case specialist, today. She is wonderful and we are so excited that she will be helping us through this process. First she shared with us what we will expect when we go to Addis Ababa to meet our child. The name of the orphanage that Bethany works with is called Galgulla (not sure of the spelling). When we receive and accept a referral, our child will be moved from the orphanage into the Bethany Foster Care Center. Holly said the children are well taken care of and the caregivers will give us lots of important information about our child. We will get to visit our child for a couple of hours each day for the first 2-3 days we are there. Then we will be able to take our child back to our hotel with us. One of the last few days we will be in the Embassy finalizing the adoption. We will be there for about 7-8 days.



She also reviewed with us the procedures and guidelines for completing our Home Study. We will meet with her the next two Saturdays, and then she will be ready to write our Home Study. We are required to attend a couple of educational workshops offered through Bethany, complete an eight hour internet course, and each read three books. We have a lot to do in these next 2 - 3 weeks, but we are up for the challenge. The best news we heard today was that as soon as our Home Study and Dossier are completed, we should only have about a 6 - 8 month wait for a referral!! This will be our motivation! After we receive the referral, we will have to wait for the court date in Ethiopia to be assigned (about 2-3 months) and then our travel plans will be finalized. We will travel about two weeks after the court date. :-)



While we will be completing the requirements for the Home Study, we will also be working on obtaining documents for our Dossier. In the mail today, we received the Ethiopian Dossier Packet that lists these documents. Needless to say, we have a lot that we will be working on in the next 3-4 weeks. Please pray for us to prioritize our time and take each step of this process one day at a time.