Our first step was to update our home study. Our social worker had to transfer our home study from a domestic home study to an international home study. The requirements for the two are very different. Our social worker was wonderful and in under two weeks pretty much has that completed! Next our home study will go to the state of Illinois for approval. This makes me nervous because there is only one lady that approves international home studies, so I work with her quite often. Now she will know everything that there is to know about me. Oh well... I have no secrets (except for that one time... J/K). The state typically takes about 2 weeks to approve the home study.
Then I will send the home study to our placement case worker with The Home of God's Love. She will send it, along with our references, on to Ted and Bev, who run The Home of God's Love in Taiwan. Once we are approved by Ted and Bev, then we will officially be placed on the waiting list for a child.
Eventually we will be matched with a child! We are open to either gender, and hoping to receive a child under the age of 12 months. Once we are matched, we wait while legal paperwork is filed for us. Then we are assigned a court date. When we know our court date, we buy our plane tickets to travel to Taiwan for the first time. We will be there for about a week, and get to spend time with our little Hokey Pokey Gocke. Then, and this is the hard part, we will have to leave our little one and come back to the U.S. for 4-8 weeks while all the other paperwork is handled. Then we will finally be able to go to Taiwan and pick up Hokey Pokey and bring him/her home with us!
So that is what we are looking at. Two long trips to Taiwan... that's a lot of skymiles! We'll have to save them up for our next adoption! Hopefully that explains the process somewhat, and gives everyone an idea of what we are looking at during this process. We can't wait to bring our little one home!
We are very excited for you two!
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