Hurray! Praise the Lord! Governor Rauner finally signed the bill
eliminating the DCFS approval requirement yesterday (7/15), so today our social
worker officially sent it to CCAI. So we’re
moving forward again!! Thank you to all
those who have been praying for this, and to those who have called the governor’s
office and signed the petition!!
Since we’ve been stuck for nearly 2 months, and since it's getting really tight to get our dossier to China before our documents start
expiring (all docs need to be dated within 12 months when they get to China,
and we’ve still got 2-3 months’ worth of steps before then, and the 1st doc is my medical exam on 10/16/14), I did send CCAI our home study early last week “unofficially”, and
asked them to start reviewing it. I
checked with them today and it sounds like they’re almost through the review
and will be able to send the changes back to our social worker in the next few
days – yeah! (They explained they always
have a few minor wording changes.) Then
the social worker will need to send them a corrected copy to review (which
should only take a few days). Then they’ll
issue an approval letter to our social worker and we’ll need to get the
finalized home study and letter and include them with our I800A application. That is the federal application to adopt a
child internationally, which we need to send to USCIS (US Citizenship and
Immigration Services). We’ve heard they
typically take 50-60 days to issue their approval, which is the last piece we’ll
need to get notarized/certified/authenticated and then send to CCAI to include
in our dossier. Then CCAI will do a
final review of our whole dossier, translate it, and send it to China… hopefully
all before 10/16/15!!
I was starting to think there’s no way we’re going to have
our dossier ready in time (especially with the budget crisis in the IL
legislature at the moment), and now it’s looking possible again! Yet again I am reminded that the Lord has
this whole process under control. Early on
(while we were still just researching options), we were told to “only adopt if
you’re sure God is calling you to”. At
the time, we struggled with that, because we weren’t sure if we were “called to
adopt”. Eventually, we did come to sense
that this was something God was leading us to do, and moving forward became a
matter of obedience. I understand that
better now: this is such a difficult, frustrating, sometimes illogical, often inefficient
process, that we probably would have given up by now if we didn’t feel this is
what God wants us to do. And there have
been several times now that I’ve come to the end of myself, of what I can
humanly do or "make happen", and then God comes through, and shows that He is Master over
all! So yes it’s hard, and often frustrating
at a human level, but God is working even through the broken processes and
bureaucracies of this world, and it’s exciting to be part of it and to catch glimpses
of His Hand at work!
We knew when we started down the path of adoption that it
wouldn’t be easy. Adoption starts with
tragedy and brokenness. But we also
trusted that God would walk the path with us, and equip us for what he had for
us. He’s been teaching us already about
patience and trust and His Faithfulness, and I suspect we’ll need what we learn from those lessons
for what lies ahead…
