Adoption Process

We thought it might be helpful to tell you a bit about the process of adopting.

We first contacted our agency in Indianapolis back in August. We had to complete a preliminary application. In the preliminary application, you designate the countries you are interested in being considered for. We chose several and the agency advised us that we were a good match with Ethiopia. We didn't know very much about Ethiopia so we did a little research, went to the library and the more we read, the more it seemed like a good fit for us.

The next step was to attend an informational meeting. We had about a month to wait so we asked if there was anything we could do in the meantime. The agency recommended three books that we are required to read, an online course through the Hague, and sent us additional paperwork for our formal application, including a lengthy biography project for each of us to write. We completed our paperwork and biographies and submitted them at our informational meeting. That was on Monday, September 22, Mark's birthday. (more on Mark's birthday in my next post)

We received an e-mail the very next day telling us that our formal application was approved! We are very excited to be moving ahead. We have been assigned an adoption specialist. She and her husband adopted a little boy from Ethiopia earlier this year. We are so glad to be working with her and look forward to learning from her first-hand experience. She's already shared a number of resources with us, including the fact that there are about 4,000 Ethiopians living in the Indy area, along with Ethiopian churches, restaurants and shops. Our network is growing already!

She also told us that there is a group who gets together somewhat regularly in Indy -- families who have adopted or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia. We have also found a similar group here in Lafayette.

Anyhow, back to the process ... we start our home study on October 20. We will meet with our adoption specialist four times and then she will write a recommendation for us. Basically, she gets to know us and writes a report about us as a way of 'presenting' us to the Ethiopian government to be considered for adoption. We will use our biographies as a starting place for our conversations. (for all of my pastor friends, it sounds a lot like pre-marital counseling!)

We have alot of paperwork to continue working on in the meantime. The home study takes about two months to complete. We will be working on two sets of documents: one for our agency and one for our dossier. The dossier is what is sent to Ethiopia. It is first authenticated by the US government and then sent to Ethiopia to be translated into Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. Our agency has a staff member in country who will walk the paperwork through the process there. He is also the person who will match our child to us, called a referral. When that happens, we will receive a phone call from our adoption specialist who will send us pictures and information about our child via e-mail. We will have the opportunity to review the info. before accepting the referral. We then respond with a 'yes!' and send a document back to Ethiopia that says so. At that time, a court date is set and the adoption will happen even before we arrive in country.

Next, we will wait for our invitation to travel. We will spend about one week in Ethiopia to meet our child, complete the immigration paperwork, and then travel back home with our new son/daughter. It usually takes about 2-4 months after receiving a referral before you are invited to travel.

So, that is a quick synopsis of how the intercountry adoption process works! As we said, it is very early in the process for us. Our hope is to have our paperwork completed and our dossier submitted sometime around the first of January. We think that is realistic but we won't know for sure until we are further along in the process.

Keep checking back for updates ... we'll do our best to keep our blog current.