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Any guesses?

We are working with two agencies. The main agency, All God's Children International, is located in Oregon. They will take care of all the international paperwork and run the orphanage in Ethiopia that we hope to adopt from. The other agency, Catholic Charities, is located in Wisconsin where we reside. Catholic Charities will take care of our home study and visits required after the adoption takes place.

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, I had heard the stories of the mounds of paperwork that must me completed. I knew it had to be a true statement since I had heard it so often, but I never would have guessed that it would begin so soon. And since we have two agencies we are working with, I'm realizing that we are also going to be doing quite a bit of extra paperwork.

We took many hours to fill out our life story in numbers, old addresses, jobs, etc to start the initial paperwork of the home study. They mentioned to us afterwards that as soon as the next set of paperwork was completed that we would have our first face-to-face meeting, during that conversation, it sounded like it would be just signing some releases for background checks.... ha! Was I fooled!

Here is the packet we received - it includes background check signature, credit bureau release, fingerprints needing to be taken, physical exam questionnaire to be filled out by family doctor for not just us as parents but also of our son, AND 28 multi-point questions to be answered by both of us. Thus, the quick turnaround I thought we would have once getting this paperwork, well, I don't think it is going to happen as fast as I thought... I'm so anxious to start our in person interviews!...so I guess I'll start pluggin' away at these papers!


 
Any guesses as to how long this paperwork will take?... my guess - MANY HOURS.




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  1. AnonymousJanuary 1, 2013 at 8:09 AM

    We adopted twins back in 1991 from Romania. We were in the same situation as you. After our daughter was born, I could not have more biological children.
    The adoption process was a roller coaster. In our case, all the other waiting parents wanted a singleton. We wanted siblings or twins. Boy/girl twins were born in June. So, we were pushed through the process like a tornado. We applied in April and the twins arrived in the US in August!
    My biggest advice is to make copies of everything. Also, after you have your child naturalized as a US citizen, request a copy of all the paperwork from INS. In our case, there was a wealth of information, including a home study of the children.
    Best wishes and God Bless.

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    Replies
    1. Mara and JonJanuary 1, 2013 at 1:38 PM

      Thank you so much for your comment. We enjoy hearing other parent's stories. Sounds like you brought home quite the blessings! I would also like to thank you for the advice - we will make sure to look into the paperwork closely when we bring the kids home; and it is always good to have a COPYING reminder! Such an easy thing that tends to be forgotten!

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