Hey precious friends and fellow prayer warriors,
I said on Facebook over a week ago I needed to update the blog, and I finally am. At the beginning of September our dossier was submitted to Colombia. We knew once it was submitted there were three options: being approved, being turned down, or being questioned further. Colombia responded really quickly, which was a blessing... but they had further questions they wanted answered.
Colombia's central authority for adoption - ICBF - questioned why we were adopting since we have no infertility issues. Both of our girls were blessed surprises, merely 19 months apart - so clearly infertility is no problem with us, and we are extremely thankful to the Lord for this! That said, we are adopting because we feel the Lord led us to do so, and He has opened doors leading us to Colombia and to this specific child. However, we cannot exactly say that in those words to Colombia. None of our responses can be "faith-based", because though it's a Catholic nation, Colombia's government wants to see what they consider long-term motivation to adopt.
The ICBF questioned the ways we are preparing ourselves and our girls for the adoption of our son, whether we are able to handle his medical condition, and what we are intending to do about sibling rivalry and jealousy. Our oldest children will be merely months apart, so we realize that sibling rivalry and jealousy will be the norm. We figure we will roll with the punches. We are lucky that we had a great example set before us when my sister, Stephanie and her husband, Jimmy got married. They both brought 4 year old girls to the table who were only a few months apart in age. They have blended phenomenally, and we have learned from them how to deal with siblings that are so close in age.
The other issue Colombia brought up was that Brent's birth certificate, which is from Great Britain, uses his full name, but our marriage certificate from the US dropped his middle name. Fear not, he IS who is claims to be. We filled out a name affidavit, similar to what I did for my married name and maiden name. Hopefully that will be sufficient, and we truly think it is.
We wanted Colombia's ICBF to really know we are preparing for our son and are ready to take on his medical conditions and deal with any sibling rivalry. Therefore, we went back to the psychologist for another session. Evidently, when we told our Sunday School class, I worded all this really badly and it made it sound like we were out of our minds to the point we had to have a psyche consult. Luckily, this is not the case. We returned to Dr. Hamblin last Friday, and basically covered all the questions once again that Colombia presented. Colombia places great weight on the opinion of a psychologist.
Additionally, we had a phone conference with our social worker, and she and the social worker that did our home study wrote up a response. We also sent off for repeat background checks for ABI/FBI. Brent and I received some mail today that said our background checks were back and we passed. I also spoke with Beth, our social worker, and our responses sans the psychological are currently being translated. We hope to have everything ready for Colombia by the end of next week.
As I close, please pray that everything is ready and is sent to Colombia by next week. Secondly, our next big prayer request is that once everything is sent back to Colombia we are approved at lightening speed, and that we can then proceed with the next steps.
We appreciate all of your prayers,
- Becky and Brent
