Home Study - Check!

We are officially finished with our home study! The awesome adoption preparation director at MLJ Adoptions, Brooke Randolph, dropped off the notarized copies yesterday. It was an unexpected and pleasant surprise to have her drive all the way over to our home to drop it off. Brooke has been simply wonderful through this entire process, and we're so thankful to her for all of her help.

Even though the home study is complete, our work is not yet done. In fact, we're gearing up for another round of filling out paperwork. This time, we're trying to find the funds to pay for the adoption! Part of that means applying for grants.

And we're still feverishly trying to find other ways to raise money for the adoption. As a reminder, please visit www.justlovecoffee.com/TheWhitfields to order some coffee and support us in our efforts. We will receive a portion (albeit a small one) of all the coffees sold through our personal web page. If you're not a coffee drinker, consider buying some and giving it to a co-worker, a friend, a family member, your pastor, your mailman. You get the idea! And we welcome any and all other ideas for fund-raising!

We do know that our profile has been presented to four birth-mothers, most of whom are out of state. Out-of-state adoptions are a good bit more expensive so that means we might need even more money than we initially anticipated. We will be creating an account through LifeSong for Orphans where people can make tax deductible contributions to support our efforts. So, look for that announcement soon.

Back to the birth-mothers reviewing our profiles: As I said, there are four possible matches and five possible children! One mom is expecting twins. The earliest arrival in any of these scenarios could be as soon as January 17th and the latest not until May. Of course, there is always the very real possibility that none of these will come to fruition. So, in every case, we wait.

I must confess that the wait has become much harder than I thought it would be. There are times I'm fine with it but knowing there are four possible matches and then not hearing an update makes the wait almost unbearable. But we are both trying to remain positive and focus on preparation. While we're trying not to get too engrossed in details, we are starting to think about things like strollers, car seats, formula and other newborn necessities.

So, while things continue to move, it feels like we're stagnant! Please continue to pray for us through this journey and pray for the birth mother and child as they also face challenging times.

Happy New Year! All good things...