Recommended for Approval!

We are done our homestudy! We finished our last interview a couple of weeks ago and felt it hadn't gone that well. I had just finished working a 24 hour shift and was a little tired and grumpy. I felt like I was arguing a lot, and Val was worried that I had put our homestudy in jeopardy. Turns out we worried for nothing. Our practitioner has finished her report (its almost 20 pages!)and we got the chance to read it this week. Val and I are very relieved to get this hurdle past us.

My mom gave Val some luggage for her birthday last week.(very thought full!) It's funny because we've been dwelling on the homestudy for so long we haven't even thought about travelling a whole lot. Even though we might not go to Guyana for a while yet, it's slowly starting to feel like more of a reality.

First Big Step!

Hi Friends :)

I am happy to say that our home study sessions that we started in January are almost done !!!!!!

We've had several meetings with our practitioner, and I think that maybe, perhaps, possibly, last Wednesday was our last meeting.

(See how sure I am of this? lol!)

In case you don't know, the home study is something that is required by the government in order for you to adopt, internationally or locally. They are done by Family And Children's Services when you are adopting through FACS, or in our case by a private adoption practitioner if you are adopting internationally or privately.

I have to say, the home study process has been very overwhelming. Hundreds of questions about your life, your childhood, your marriage, your faith, discipline, finances, lifestyle, and anything else you could possibly think of was covered in the home study. There is also a short 'interview' with your children and without you. It's a bit unnerving having someone you don't know come into your home, so you can spill your entire life details out for them while they write it all down on a notepad!

The next step is WAITING again.

(Shocker!)

Our practitioner will review our session notes and write a report on us either recommending us or not recommending us for adoption. And then once we are recommended

(see how I've disregarded the second option?)

she sends the report to the government to get an official letter of approval from them, which will go in our file and will come with us to Guyana! This is about a 3-6 month wait.......sigh.

Guyana!!!

So, after much prayer and lots of discussion and research, we've narrowed our list of countries down to ONE :)

Guyana (pronounced gy-AN-ə), previously known as British Guiana, is on the northern coast of South America. Guyana has been a former colony of the British, Dutch, French and for 200 years the Spanish. Guyana is one of the few Caribbean countries which are not islands and

the population of Guyana is approximately 770,000. About 90% of people living there live on the coast(approximately 10% of the total land area of Guyana). The rest of the country is thick jungle, with little or no roads going into the interior.

The population of Guyana is made up of groups with ethnic backgrounds from India, Africa, Europe, China, with Aboriginal. These groups of diverse nationality backgrounds have a common language, English and Creole.

Some of the biggest problems the Guyanese people are facing are poor health care (with many people dying from AIDS, malaria, and because of bad drinking water...intestinal problems), also poverty is a huge issue.

The reason why we chose Guyana is pretty simple. We had narrowed down our choices to a few countries. Due to the fact that we already have 4 children, a lot of the countries wouldn't look twice at us. We were seriously considering Ethiopia as an option, but in the last few weeks the program for Ethiopia closed. We were also approved to go to South Africa, but the wait list is quite high and they prefer young childless couples. So, the choice left was Guyana and we are very excited about it!! We are happy that God laid out a clear choice for us because we were very uncertain which direction to take!

So, now we wait again. We haven't officially signed any papers, but we have to wait until the homestudy is done to make the next real move. Until then, we will be filing for citizenship or immigration, doing more research, making connections.