Unfortunately, we quickly hit a bump in the road regarding our home study.
After making several phone calls and leaving messages with our social worker, she
finally called me back.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot complete the rest of your home study. I am not
qualified to perform a home study for Colombia.”
Oh, no! We knew this set us back quite a bit, yet we didn’t know how
much.
So naive at the time, I didn’t have
a clue how to find a social worker qualified to do a home study for Colombia.
Another school year already started, severely limiting my time to do research
and make phone calls during business hours. I hated to think of my children waiting
any longer on us than necessary. I considered finding out who did the majority
of the home studies in Austin for the families adopting the other Colombian
children who came in the summer. Could she come to Dallas?
The program coordinator in the
Austin area gave me a name to contact, so I sent a message to that social
worker, who, of course, happened to be out of the office for a week. I
reluctantly waited. What else could I do? Desperate to find somebody quickly in
my own limited time, I neglected to research any other options. In the
meantime, we spent a week filling out financial aid paperwork, applying for
grants, and collecting letters of reference from our pastor, family, and
friends.
Fortunately, the social worker responded to my e-mail quickly once she returned
to her office. She could travel to Dallas to complete our home study, with fees
reflecting her added travel expenses. She sent me the application (along with a
list of all the required documents). Yep, we started completely over with the
home study process.
So much for thinking we were ahead
of the game. Now, we might even lag behind, plus we’d lost an entire month.
Since our previous social worker had some of the information needed for our new
home study, we requested her to send our entire packet back to us so we could
forward most of it on to our new social worker. Thankfully, she complied
quickly and refunded us the percentage of our fees to her that we didn't use
for services so far. Since we’d already completed one out of the three visits,
we couldn’t get a full refund. However, the remaining amount covered the new
fees.
We finally switched from one home study agency to the other, now working
with both an adoption agency and a social worker who dealt specifically with
these Colombian adoptions. I did feel a little uncomfortable, completely pulling
out of a solid Christian agency to start up with two secular agencies. Suddenly,
our Christ-connection we shared with the previous agency and social worker no
longer existed. Now they saw us as people with a “religion” we lived by, with a
“faith” not always understood. I hoped that wouldn’t matter, as long as we got
our kids. But honestly, it did matter, and it made the road ahead much more
difficult and uncomfortable.
Our first agency prayed over our
family. They prayed weekly over every family adopting a child through their organization.
We took comfort in that. With our new agencies, nothing of the sort took place.
Fortunately, our church family fulfilled that role and prayed us through the
months ahead as we trudged through this overwhelming process.
Those first few steps consumed a great deal of time as we hurried to
complete and send out all the applications and forms. After that, time crept by.
I prayed for those children every single day. Their pictures motivated me and
kept my heart filled with joy as I waited through each part of the process.
We couldn’t schedule our home study for almost two whole months. Fortunately,
this agency only required one visit. The social worker met with us as a family,
as a couple, and then individually. We felt at ease talking with her. She
walked through the house and mentioned a few areas needing attention, like a
lock on the shed door. She seemed pleased and said she’d send us a copy of her
report to go over before turning it in.
Then the next blow came.
“I will send you a complete rough draft within about four to eight
weeks.” The wait might extend for possibly two more months. Ugh.
Our children seemed to drift further
and further away. I wished I could explain to them why it took so long.
However, they didn’t really know about a possible adoption. Someone told them
we would try, so they had their suspicions, at least Juan David did. Viviana’s
young age prevented her from really understanding.
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