The Process

We are currently in the middle of our home study, which is technically the first step for the adoption. We had our first (of three) in-home visit with our social worker last night, and it went great. We LOVE the sweet lady who is putting our home study together for us. We have just applied to the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) to start the process of getting visas for our children, and we now await a date from them for our fingerprinting. We have filled out TONS of paperwork, gathered references, gone through physical exams, and had our home inspected. We have found a great Ugandan lawyer (from what I have read and heard, I think he is one of the best if not THE best family lawyer in Uganda!) who has agreed to take our case, and we have found an orphanage that I am about 90% sure we will go through for our adoption (we will decide for sure after all of our paperwork is completed in a few months).

After we complete our home study, get approval from the USCIS, and have all the necessary paperwork together and in the hands of our lawyer in Uganda, we will contact the orphanage, who will then give us our referral for two baby boys. Our lawyer takes care of things on that end and will put together our case and notify us of our court date (some people only get their court date assigned within a week of when they have to travel!), and we will travel to Uganda for a couple of court dates and some other paperwork that has to be completed there. We are still figuring out whether we will be there for one long trip or two shorter ones a few weeks apart, but from the time we get our referral from the orphanage, it will likely be just a matter of a few months until we bring our babies home!!!

As our path to our adoption has unfolded, it has been a wonderful blessing to find that one after another of the people who will be helping us through this process are also Believers. Diane, the social worker doing our home study, is a Christian. Our lawyer in Uganda is a Christian and has a reputation as a man of integrity, and the orphanage we think we are going to go through is run by a large church in Kampala, Uganda, so our children will be (or perhaps already are!) under the care of people who know and love the Lord. What a blessing!

Please join us in prayer for our adoption journey, for our hearts, for two precious little ones on the other side of the world who are either newborns or who will be entering the world some time in the next few months and who may be spending some part of their sweet little lives hungry and/or abandoned somewhere, and for the birth mom(s) of these children.