There's a finish line around here somewhere... I think.

    Well, last week we finally heard that our license had finally transferred from Belmont County to out new agency, Guidestone.  We still don't really know for sure if our license 'upgrade' from 'foster home' to 'therapeutic foster home' has been accomplished or not.  I really need to ask our contact at the agency again when we see her.

   You would think that we would be more insistent that this get squared away but right now our summer schedule is booked solid.  We've thought about getting a new dog and have put that off until fall (at least) and there is really no way that we could squeeze in plans for an extra family member at this point.  Our hope now is to get all the paperwork completed, T's crossed and I's dotted, over the summer so that we will be ready to accept a placement in late summer or fall.

    Meanwhile, I've begun to occasionally look at the children (and their biographies) on AdoptUSKids.org again.  It breaks my heart to see all these kids without parents.  Sometimes you just want to take them all but there are just so many...

    One more thing, two weeks ago we attended some additional foster parent training that was put on by the Cuyahoga County department of Children's Services.  While there we attended a session that was taught by Detective Bobby Grizzard.  It was excellent and frightening at the same time.  I am hoping to have Detective Grizzard do similar presentation at our church, both for the community and for our youth.  You can find my thoughts on his presentation here: Sexual Predators: the Hunters and the Hunted.

Everything is Done... Except the Waiting.

   We got word on Wednesday of last week that our agency had finally made contact with the last of our references and all the paperwork was then forwarded upstream.  What that means for us I'm not exactly sure.  Does that mean that our file has not yet been sent to, and reviewed by, the folks in Columbus who will, ultimately, have to issue our new foster home license?  Is Columbus already done and now we are only waiting on our agency to dot the "i"'s and cross the "t"'s?  Does that mean we will have our license this month or a month from now?  Honestly, I am utterly clueless.  All I know is that we will continue waiting.

   When we finally decided that the time was right to begin the process of another adoption from foster care, we knew that it would require classes and training, a new homestudy and all that goes with it.  We've been down that road before and much of it is familiar territory.  The weird part of this was, and is, how messed up the whole thing became when we found out we were moving.  Don't get me wrong, this had been a great move for us.  We love where we are, the church where I serve, the school that our kids attend, and the people that we live and work with.  We just never expected that transferring our homestudy to a new house (which is what we thought was going to happen) would take as long as it has.  Here we are, eight months later, and we still don't even have our license, let alone a placement.  Heck, without the license, we can't even be too serious about looking through the listings on AdoptUSkids.org. 

    I'm not blaming anyone.  It wasn't any one person's (or agency's) fault.  I know that the delays are an accumulation of choices that we made, as well as the choices of our new county and our new agency.  Moving delayed things.  Deciding we didn't like the county agency in out new residence delayed things.  Moving to a new agency and upgrading our license delayed things.  And on top of that, we lived through the loss of our Aunt Gladys who, generously, left us an inheritance.  Her gift to us is a fabulous blessing (of that I have no doubt) but the time we have needed, and will need for the next several months, to handle her estate, home and belongings, makes it somewhere between difficult and impossible to accept a placement right now, even if one were available.

We're hoping that life will calm down toward the end of summer and we will be ready for a placement.  Will one be available?  Will our agency need us to do respite care for someone amidst the chaos that is our summer?  Will a placement be available when we're finally ready?  To these questions, and others, my only answer is, "Who knows?"  In truth, we will do as we have always done.  We will continue to lean on, and trust, the wisdom and love that God has for us.  It's our lives, but it's his plan.

Meanwhile... we wait.

One Year and Counting

    Looking back at this blog I realized that we started our pre-service classes in February or March of 2012, which means that we've been chasing this rabbit for over a year now.  I guess technically, we were done at the end of last June but then everything got interrupted when we moved from Belmont County to Stark County.  At the moment, as far as i know, everything is done except that our agency, Guidestone, has been unable to contact one of our references.  I don't suppose it's the fault of anyone in particular, but just a sort of perfect storm.  First, someone waited to call our references after all of our additional required training was completed (because we are upgrading our license to a therapeutic foster home) and in doing so, managed to try to call one of them while they were out of state for a wedding and then away on vacation, then, when they returned and called back, no one answered and they left a message.  And then no one returned the message, until they were out of town again... I think.  Anyway, everyone is at home again so I hope they can quit playing phone tag and "Git 'er Done."

    In the meantime, our lives have taken a few turns as well.  Obviously, we moved and changed churches/employers last July and so unpacking and readjusting to new schools and a new community has been required, but there have been more adjustments as well.  In December, our Aunt Gladys passed away after a long battle with cancer and named Patti (my wife) as the executrix of her estate.  The legal hassles and the hours of work that this has drawn Patti into have been considerable and daunting.  We thank God regularly for good financial advice, a good attorney, and an employer that gives me a lot of flexibility.

    Since Lina will be 18 this fall, and therefore 17 years since we brought her home, we thought it was time for her to get a chance to see her homeland.  Therefore, on top of everything else, Patti and Lina are planning a heritage tour to China with Holt International, the folks who pioneered international adoption and who helped us bring Lina home to our family all those years ago.  As before, we are finding that the Holt folks are thorough, professional and just plain great.

    On top of all that, we are planning for my ordination as an Elder in the United Methodist Church in June, a family vacation in July, and my attendance at the National Association of Rocketry Annual Meet (NARAM) in Aurora, Ohio this summer, as well as various trips to summer camp, band camp, regular summer training runs for our student athletes and cross country camp.

    In essence, what I'm saying is that while Guidestone would like for us to just give them another reference so that can stop playing phone tag, our lives are currently spinning so fast, that we (at least me) don't really mind if this slows us down just a little bit.  While we would like to be "done" and have our license in-hand, I don't expect that we'd be totally available for a placement right now.  Could we squeeze in plans for one more child?  Probably, but as fast as we're spinning at the moment, they would have to run pretty hard to get on this crazy ride with us.

A Dream So Big - a story of missionary adoption and much, much more...

I try not to do it, but I an cross-posting this from another Blog that I write.  Today my friend Steve Peifer's book will hit the shelves.  Although Steve and his wife Nancy are missionaries with a heart for God, they are also the parents of two biological children and two more that were adopted from Kenya.  Steve and Nancy's adventure, and this book, would not have happened without one of the greatest tragedies that can befall any parent, the loss of a child.  If you are the parent of an adopted child, or any child, you will want to read this book.

My wife, Patti, and another member of our church first met Steve Peifer during a trip to visit Keith and Jamie Weaver, missionaries sent by our church to the people of Kenya.  There, Patti met Steve and worked with this beautiful wife Nancy in the library at Rift Valley Academy.  I first met Steve at my home church when we invited him to come and tell us about his efforts to feed hungry school children that he describes in A Dream So Big.  Since then Patti and I have answered a call to pastoral ministry and have not only followed Steve’s adventures through his regular emails, but have, on several occasions, invited him to speak in the churches where we were serving.  I don’t think that his story has ever failed to astound his listeners. 

     

    Steve is an average, middle class guy whose life was turned upside down and who, through no particular plan of his own, ended up in Kenya, Africa seeing things that most of us cannot imagine, and doing things that we would be afraid to do.  Throughout this story, Steve insists that he is not an amazing man, just a man through whom, God is doing amazing things. 

 

    In A Dream So Big, we meet Steve, Nancy, and their family before the adventure began, at home, in Texas.  We walk with them through one of the most difficult times that a parent can imagine, the loss of their child, Steven, and then follow them as they head to Africa.  At first, their African adventure is intended to be just a year away to sort things out and to process the pain and the trauma of losing a child, a time for their family to be together and to heal.  But, as Steve often points out, Africa changes a person.  After a year in Kenya, the Peifers feel called, if not compelled, to return on a more permanent basis, and it is then that the real adventure begins.  

    Not content to see children lying in the dirt at school because they are weak from hunger, Steve sets out to change the world, or at least his little corner of it.  Steve asks, and with the help of his friends and supporters in the United States, begins to provide lunches for two schools nearby.  Two schools become four, and then ten, and by the end of the book become a truly extraordinary number.  Providing food not only allows the children to be free from hunger, but gives them the strength to get an education and an incentive to stay in school.  Even with these successes, Steve is not content.  Building on the feeding program, Steve and his friends begin to build solar powered computer centers.

    Just because I said the word computer, do not be tempted to think that this is just another story about wealthy, white Americans swooping in to “rescue” Africa.  Those stories are old and they often are the picture of “Ugly Americans” with all the cultural insensitivity that you might expect.  That is not Steve’s story.  Steve builds a program in which the villages take ownership of their schools and their computer centers.  The parents know that when these children finish school and head into the city to find work, as most of them do, that they will find good paying, skilled jobs instead of living in the slums fighting with untold thousands of others for a handful of unskilled jobs.  The school children, their parents, and many others have seen Steve’s vision, and it is a vision that can break the back of poverty in Africa.  It is a vision that can change the world.

    I highly recommend A Dream So Big.  As you follow Steve, Nancy and their family on this amazing adventure, you will laugh out loud at the ridiculous situations in which Steve finds himself.  But you will also weep at the poverty and hopelessness that he sees all around him.  A Dream So Big invites you, not only to follow along, but to be a part of this incredible adventure.  I have no doubt that Steve Peifer is changing the world, one child at a time.  When you read this book, you will discover that you can too.

Steve's book, A Dream So Big was released today and can be found on Amazon here: A Dream So Big.

Legacy of an Adopted Child

A few days ago, my Mom sent me a newspaper clipping that was a reprint of a Dear Abby letter.  In it was a poem (author unknown) entitled, Legacy of An Adopted Child.  I read it and liked it.  Our children are at an age where they don't care much for poetry (and in truth I was never much one for poetry either, but it seems to grow on me as the years go by).  In any case, i thought I would share it here in the event that someone may find it who had never seen it before.  i will happily give credit where it is due if anyone ever discovers who the real author might be.

Legacy of an Adopted Child

Once there were two women

Who never knew each other.

One you do not remember,

The other you call mother.

Two different lives

Shaped to make yours one.

One became your guiding star.

The other became your sun.

The first gave you life

And the second taught you to live it.

The first gave you a need for love

And the second was there to give it.

One gave you a nationality,

The other gave you a name.

One gave you a seed of talent,

The other gave you an aim.

One gave you emotions,

The other calmed your fears.

One saw your first sweet smile,

The other dried your tears.

One gave you up--

It was all that she could do.

The other prayed for a child

And God led her straight to you.

And now you ask me

Through your tears,

The age-old question

Through the years;

Heredity or environment

Which are you the product of?

Neither, my darling -- neither,

Just two different kinds of love.

Why the Russian Adoption Ban is a Disaster in Slow Motion

    By now most of you have heard about the adoption ban put into law in Russia.  It all began with an attempt by our United States government to rein in human rights violations in Russia.  President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which provides sanctions against Russian citizens deemed by the US to have violated human rights.  Prior to this, the Russian government was concerned about the abuse some Russian children have received at the hands of their adoptive parents in the United States but had only recently, in November, 2012, signed a new treaty designed to provide greater access for Russian officials who desired to review the treatment of adopted children.  This new agreement was only in place for eight weeks before the adoption ban was signed by President Putin.

    The Russian government claims that the adoption ban was necessary because they were not getting access to the documents that the new treaty was supposed to give them and the American government claims that the whole thing is just retaliation for passing the Magnitsky Act.  Whichever is true, it is neither the American nor the Russian government that is the big loser.  The big losers remain the children who will remain in Russian orphanages instead of in loving homes.

    I know something about this.  Our family includes two children who were adopted from a Russian orphanage.  The trauma that they suffered in their first year of life has been a real education.  Before we witnessed it firsthand, I never would have believed that children could be so damaged in their first year of life.  We were always told that “Love heals all wounds,” and “Love conquers all,” and things like that.  We genuinely believed it when people told us that all we had to do was take them home and love them.  But sometimes love isn’t enough.  Thankfully, the problems that our children have, though not insignificant, are not nearly what other parents, whom we’ve met, live with every day.  Some of the neurological, emotional and psychological problems that grow out of living in an orphanage, even for a few months, are frightening. 

 

    While I could not ever condone abuse, I have seen enough to understand how parents of some of these children could reach a point where they simply don’t know what else to do.  Many parents do not abuse these damaged children but recognize that they cannot cope with the behaviors of their children and choose to dissolve or disrupt the adoption.  That means what it sounds like; they go in front of a judge and declare that they are no longer the parents.  This frees them, but makes the children orphans yet again and turns their care over to the state in which they live, or to yet another set of adoptive parent and cause still more emotional and psychological damage.

    Children from former Eastern bloc countries (primarily Russia and Ukraine) bear a higher risk for behavioral problems and eventual adoption disruption.  We don’t completely know why, but although similar problems are seen in children from other nations, these children see higher rates of disruption than any others.  I cannot quote any particular sources but I have heard estimates as high as 10-20 percent.  That means that even with the resources of wealthier American parents, even with parents who love them, even with access to modern medical and psychological care, between one in ten and one in five of these kids have real, serious problems.   Do the Russians have a right to be concerned about what is happening to their children?  Certainly.  But what happens if they don’t come here, don’t have parents, and don’t have access to care?  Russia does not have a history of adoption.  Adoption is not a part of their culture.  While adoption does happen, fewer Russian children are adopted by Russians than by Americans, and we are just one country among many who has, until now, been able to adopt from Russia.  Children who remain in Russian orphanages are likely to stay there until they “age out,” until they are old enough that the Russian government turns them loose on the streets with no support whatsoever.  The majority of children who age out of Russian orphanages will end up dead or in prison within two years.

    Yes, these children can be scarred and damaged by even a few months in an orphanage.  Yes, we should strive with all that is within us to do a better job than we are doing.  No.  No child should suffer abuse at the hands of their parents regardless of their behavior.  But the Russian government needs to look in the mirror as well.  Our system may not be perfect, but an adoption ban that prohibits these children from coming home to loving parents doesn’t fix the problem and in reality only makes it worse.

As usual, when grown-ups fight, the ones who lose... are the children.

Family Meetings and More Classes

    A week or two ago we had a family meeting to talk about Foster Care and adoption.  I had downloaded a blog (I can't remember where I got it now but probably from the Twitter feed from www.adoptuskids.org or adoptivefamilies.com) that listed things that you should talk about before bringing new kids into your house and into your family.  Our kids knew a lot of the things we talked about just because we've talked about it before and because they've been dealing with some of the same (post-adoption) issues themselves.  Naturally, our children think that our family is okay the way it is and they aren't fond of the idea of introducing more chaos to our house just when things seemed to be finally calming down a bit.    They do, however, accept that it is our decision to make and they trust that we love them and have the best interests of everyone in mind.

    One great question was how we could afford to have more children, particularly because they think that we are poor.  We really aren't poor although we are far from rich.  I left a better paying career some years ago to follow a calling that I felt on my life and while we get by on what I earn, we don't buy a lot of the toys that our friends have and our kids don't have all the things that their friends have.  Sometimes this is because we truly can't afford it, but often it is because we've chosen to live more simply.  Even so, how we will ever pay for college tuition is something of a mystery.  If all three of our children decide to pursue higher education, we will at some point have all of them in college at the same time.  At that point, the cost of tuition, even in a state university, will be more than my annual salary.  Our kids know that their choice of colleges will ultimately have less to do with preference and far more to do with affordability and financial aid packages.  While we know that foster kids come with a monthly stipend, we began this process with adoption in mind and have never considered this as a long-term source of income.

    Meanwhile, we have one more set of classes to take to complete our application to upgrade our foster care license.  Today and tomorrow we will take First Aid and CPR classes and then, in a couple weeks we will have our new fire inspection.  At that point we will be done and the paperwork submitted to the State of Ohio.  I was told recently that we should expect the licensing process to take about four weeks.

First Impressions

    It’s been too long since I wrote anything here.  A couple weeks ago we attended a training session mandated by our new county.  Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I had expected.  The staff and the other families were as nice as I anyone could have asked for, but that wasn’t really the problem.  If we back up another week we encounter the problem.  Before we left Belmont County we completed all of the training required by them and by the State of Ohio and were certified as foster parents.  We understood that, since we would be in a new home, we would need to have another home visit and another fire inspection.  The problem is that when we contacted our new county agency, we were told that we would also have to take several additional classes, rewrite our home-study and provide copies of the home-studies that were done for our first two adoptions thirteen and fifteen years ago. 

    We’ve all heard about first impressions and these were not good ones.  We weren’t too happy about some of the new requirements and wished them luck with the last one.  We sure don’t have copies of our old home-studies (or if we do they are buried so deep in our box pile they may not be found until our children go sort through our stuff when they put me in a nursing home), I’m not sure the agencies that wrote them retain records that long, and at least one of the social workers that wrote them died ten years ago.

   As I said, we went to the first class the new agency required and it wasn’t bad.  It was all about the rules they expected us to follow.  Many rules were the same as Belmont County, some were new and a few were just explained better.  Some of the things that we learned weren’t especially welcome.  The county was fairly clear that although you have the chance to express your preferences, when they select you for a particular foster child you may not get the chance to review their file first and it would count against you (as in, it would impact your ability to be offered foster children in the future) if you refused a child that was offered.  One other item did not go over especially well with us.  Our new county requires an exclusivity agreement.  If anyone is certified by them they insist upon exclusive “rights” to them as foster parents for a minimum of one year.  If you choose to change agencies in less than one year, the (taxpayer supported, public) agency will bill you for the expenses they incurred in getting your certification.  We thought this was unusual and we mentioned it to a couple other social workers that we know.  Neither had ever heard of such a thing.  Again, not a great first impression.

    Surprisingly, at the same time that we were discussing these negative first impressions, I had a surprise visitor at my office at church.  A representative from Guidestone, a private foster care/adoption agency stopped by the church to meet the new pastor (me) and to see if she could come and speak for a few minutes about their agency some Sunday morning.  Since Guidestone is essentially an agency of the United Methodist Church, this was a reasonable request.  The surprising thing was the timing.  My wife and I had already discussed the possibility of meeting with them to discuss options particularly because of our first impressions at our county agency.  The end result has been that we’ve deliberately slowed the pace of re-certification with the county (since we don’t want to have to pay them for their services if we choose to go elsewhere) and we are looking more deeply into what it would take to re-certify with Guidestone instead.

    All in all, the process is taking longer than we thought it would, is more difficult that it ought to be, and now we are not so sure that foster care is something we want to pursue long-term.  Instead we are feeling that foster-to-adopt as a deliberate path to adoption may be the best course for us.   The adventure continues…

Did Advertising Influence our Decsion to Adopt?

    For some time now I have been following the Twitter feed of AdoptUSKids and before that I would occasionally drift back to their website (www.adoptuskids.org) and page through the photo listings of the children who were available for adoption and who are just waiting for a family to call their own.  The state of Ohio (and most other states) has a similar list (http://www.adoptionphotolistingohio.org) that I also have spent time paging through.  In both of these lists I have been overcome by the sheer number of children.  When looking at photographs and biographies of these children I have just had to stop when I realized that there were 260 pages to look at, each with 15 photographs and some of those were sibling groups and not just one child.  To get my hands around these numbers I made regular use of the search tools to filter the search results using all sorts of criteria.  I’ve searched by state, by gender, by race, by age, and I would have searched using other criteria if could.  For obvious reasons of safety and privacy the general public cannot search using religion or other personal information.  Once our homestudy is complete and in our hands (which should be any day now), we can register with AdoptUSKids and gain access to additional information about the children we are interested in.  At this point, I am uncertain just how much information will be made available to us when that happens.

    This week Adopt US Kids tweeted this question, “Did a TV, radio or print ad influence our decision to adopt?” and asked folks to share their stories through www.humaninterestfilms.com.  As I explained in my blog post, Why Now?, we always thought we’d have more children but, for a variety of reasons, the time was never right, until now.  For some time, years in fact, whenever things would begin to look like our lives might be making a way for us to think about kids again, I would find myself returning to the photo listings and imagining what it would be like to add another child to our family or what sort of child would fit our already quirky collective.  When we finally made the decision to get serious about adopting again, we were still looking at the photo lists and each week when AdoptUSKids would tweet a new pair of featured children, I would click on the link and have a look.

    So did a TV, radio or print ad influence our decision to adopt?  Well, it probably wasn’t TV or radio, and we didn’t see too many ads in the newspaper, but the Internet had a lot to do with keeping us connected and sustaining our interest in adoption.  It hasn’t happened yet of course.  We expect to receive our completed homestudy in the next two weeks (and then get it revised after we move) and then we will see where the road takes us.   Whatever happens, the State of Ohio, AdoptUSKids, Twitter, and others have certainly had some influence on getting us to this place.

Second homestudy visit/thoughts on "The Process"

    Yesterday, we had our second visit by our social worker, Jennifer.  Once again we answered a bunch of questions but, again, none of them seemed to be terribly intrusive (more on that later).  We answered questions, filled out a few new forms and we gave Jennifer a copy of our floor plan/fire escape plan as well as our fire inspection that we completed last week.  After completing the paperwork portion of our meeting we gave her a brief tour of our home despite the boxes and ongoing evidence of packing for the move to our new home at the end of June (only four weeks left to pack - Yikes!).

    The first time that we had a homestudy, probably fifteen or sixteen years ago, I remember thinking that the process seemed extraordinarily intrusive.  I remember thinking that many of the questions seemed very personal and that I was very uncomfortable giving out highly detailed private financial information.  A decade and a half later it doesn't seem to be that big a deal but I am not entirely sure why.  I suppose that, in part, as a society we have become accustomed to having a little less privacy than we once did.  Combine that with out constant exposure to Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, text messages and other immediate news sources we, perhaps, feel that more people already know an awful lot about us and our private lives.  Mostly, however, I think it is simply that while fifteen years ago we had never given that sort of information out to anyone but our closest family (especially financial information) but in the intervening years we have given this information out many times for unemployment benefits, Medicaid benefits (while unemployed and underemployed), applications for state funded subsidies for counseling related to Reactive Attachment Disorder, financial aid applications, and employment related background checks.  While I am still not a big fan of giving someone (anyone) a detailed list of our assets and income, it doesn't bother me nearly as much as it did the first time.

    Still, be forewarned, if you are thinking of adopting or getting licensed for foster care, or if you have already begun that process, you will be asked to give out information about yourself that you may never have given out to anyone, even your parents or closest friends.  For us, it was not, and is not, a deal killer.  Uncomfortable?  Yes.  But the folks at Children's Services are decent, trustworthy people.  They have a real "need to know" this kind of stuff and they do a good job of keeping your private information private.  If I were you, I wouldn't let a little discomfort stop me from attaining one of life's most worthwhile goals.

    Trust me, despite all of the hassles and difficulties we've had raising our three kids over the last fifteen years, and despite all the trips to see counselors (and doctors, and orthodontists, etc.) there is nothing that I wouldn't do over again in a heartbeat.  Our kids are so awesome, and I am so proud of them, that I can never express it adequately in words.  If you are thinking of adoption, or if you have already started, do not let the process prevent you from reaching your goal.

Press on.

Persevere.

It will all be worth it in the end.

Homestudy News

    This week has been busy for us as we continue to pack but also to clean so that we can complete several tours and inspections that are needed for a variety of reasons.  First, we invited Ted, the pastor that will succeed me after we leave, and his family to come on Monday to have lunch, tour the house and to meet some of the teachers and coaches that will be important in their daughter’s life next year.  On Tuesday Jennifer, our social worker from Children’s Services, visited us to begin our homestudy and then in the afternoon our local fire chief stopped by to complete the fire inspection for our homestudy.  We still anticipate one more visit from the church trustees as they look over the house before we change pastors so that we can discuss what maintenance issues might need to be addressed as a part of the transition and in the coming months.

    We have also learned that most of our references have completed the required paperwork and have returned it to Jennifer.  All this means that so far, we are on track to complete our homestudy before we move to Stark County.  Again, our hope is that instead of starting over with a new county, this means that we will be able to simply ask Stark County to update our homestudy to reflect our new address (which of course will mean a visit from a new social worker as well as a new fire inspection), new church and new school.  All in all, still a complicated process but probably less than trying to start over again from square one.

    Tomorrow, we have to go to Cleveland Clinic for a check-up, to Akron for a funeral and to Newcomerstown for our district track meet.  Next week, Jennifer will come again for another visit, the first of the moving companies will come to give us an estimate, the kids will have their last day of school, and our daughter will run in the regional track meet.  I’m afraid that our lives will be lived at pretty much a dead run until after we move and maybe until school starts again in the fall.  In any case, hopefully by the time school starts we will be fully 'homestudied' and ready to bring home a new family member!  

That is still a both exciting and terrifying idea.  Change doesn't come easily to any of us and our family has been constant at the five of us for almost fourteen years.  I keep thinking of a line from the "Little Rascals" television show many years ago when the kid's coaster car was careening wildly down a gigantic hill.  In the midst of their excitement and fear, Stymie said, "I don't know where we're going, but we're on our way!"  I can relate.

Pre-Service Completed (honest!)

    This past Thursday my wife and I traveled several counties over to take our last pre-service class.  During the classes offered in our own county, we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary and had planned a short get-a-way together.  As a result, we missed one class and had to attend a make-up class with another county.  As we often do, we planned our route using Yahoo! Maps.  Normally this map program seriously overestimates how long it will take to travel but even so we added an extra half-hour to be sure we would be on time.  We stopped only once for fuel and to grab a hot dog (also at the gas station) but somehow still managed to find ourselves running late.  We did manage to make it to class within the required window (you can only miss 15 minutes of the class in order to be counted for attendance).

    The class that we attended was on Preventing and De-escalating Crisis (session 6).  The class was very informative and we were impressed by the instructor and appreciated her personal experiences adopting from the Foster System.  We also found something more unexpected.  As I noted earlier, we had made friends with the folks with whom we had spent seven weeks with in class but we really anticipated that for this make-up, we would just sort of drop in and take off.  Instead, what we found was another class full of folks who, though very different from one another and who were there for a variety of reasons, were still connected through a common bond of their love for children and the desire to make a difference.  On top of that, before we left, we made another friend or two.  During the class and afterward, we found ourselves in conversation with another couple.  While we had thought that everyone would leave after the class was over, this couple wanted to continue to talk and get to know one another better.

    We have also made a call to our social worker at Jobs and Family Services and let her know that we have completed the pre-service training.  With that step behind us, she is now planning our home visits and some additional paperwork (physical forms, vet forms for the pets, etc) so that she will be able to finish our home study before July.  My wife and I are still somewhat unsure of where this new adventure will lead us.  We began thinking that we only wanted to consider adoption but now that we have taken the classes and learned so much (both from the instructors and from the other parents) we are planning to be certified as foster parents as well.  I remain a little uncertain about how we will do in the long-term.  I have no doubt that we have something to contribute, that our family can make room for a few more and that we have enough love to share nor do I have any doubt that we can make a difference in the life of a child.  My only doubts are how we will be able to hold up when a child we have cared for is allowed to return home to his (or her) birth-parents.  I suppose that there will be a joy in seeing a family reunited, but what feelings of loss will we feel as well?

    Please pray with us as we consider where God might be leading in this new adventure.