One step at a time

Well, we have yet to hear from America World to be officially accepted, but I realize it just seems like it's been forever (since it was Saturday night of Labor Day weekend) and it's only been less than two weeks. If I'm struggling with patience right now, I can't even imagine what it will be like waiting for a referral! I think faith, patience, and trust might be themes for this adoption journey! I'm already sensing all of those in these last weeks and months.

Progress has been made, though! On Tuesday, I ran around Elkhart and the surrounding area (with Kole and Owen who were absolutely wonderful!) doing various errands and dropping off forms to doctor's offices, a friend, the social services building, all to prepare for our homestudy. It felt good to get things dropped off. We have a physical scheduled for Kole next week and Karl and I need lab work (and of course our doctor's office is taking a vacation until Wednesday! There's that patience thing again...). Karl may need a physical, too, but we shall see. I also scheduled the homestudy today for October 4th...need to check those smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarm, etc! Ruth, the social worker, seems really nice and laid back, though, and comes highly recommended from our friends the Cannon's who just adopted three beautiful kiddos from Liberia, so I'm not overly concerned. I am concerned (although not really but Karl couldn't tell what with all my nagging) that Karl won't get the individual assessment done by the next Wednesday deadline I've given him :) Sometimes I just can't help myself (trying to parent my husband, I mean). The assessment questions are SO involved! I'm sure many of you may know what I'm talking about, but to give you a clue, I've already typed sixteen pages on this computer and I already have another section saved on Karl's and another handwritten. The good news is I only have about four pages of questions left to answer, so I feel like the light's at the end of the tunnel.

So, there's where we're at right now. It's SO wild and I'm SO happy and I'm confident that God is going to do great things through this new step of faith. In fact, I got an e-mail back from Pastor Dan at our church (in response to mine) that he'd like to sit down with me to discuss starting up some sort of adoption ministry at our church. I have no idea what that would look like right now, but I'm going to start doing my research to find out. More people need to get involved! Save the children, save the world. (sorry, that was a horrible take from "Heroes," but sometimes I just have funny things pop into my head and I can't stop)