A time to research and pray!

The end of April and the month of May have been extremely busy getting things in order to be able to officially say "Yes" to our referral!  Our home study had expired and would need updating immediately.  We would have to come up with $20,000 immediately to pay our attorney.  Which means we would immediately need to get working on some grant applications.  But, in order to submit grant applications we would need a current home study! Since our birth mom is not due until October, our attorney gracious gave us until the end of May to pay his retention fee, so I immediately went to work making calls for our home study update! Yes, immediate is the focus word right now!

At the beginning of May, we made the hard decision to put the house on the market in hopes of a quick sale for quick cash to help us pay for this adoption. Though this house would be perfect to welcome home a new child, we try not to attach ourselves to it or other things that are not eternal.  The gift of a child is far more important than this house and we can't think of a better way to invest our time and resources!  So, in the midst of paperwork and gathering documents, I had a house to declutter, organize, clean and stage!

We caught our previous home study agency in a transition period.  Our previous social worker was not working anymore and my calls were being fielded by someone in Florida! It took a few days, but I finally got to the right person in Tennessee who was fantastic about getting our home visits scheduled ASAP and was super quick with our written report.  In addition, our amazing grant agency approved us in 24 hours after receiving only a rough draft of our home study! The last piece of the puzzle was waiting patiently for our tax return money to come in! We desperately needed this to make our large payment to our attorney.  Someone was dragging their feet and after numerous calls and emails we received our return just in time! God has given us lots of "Yes's" so far to encourage us along on this huge faith journey!!

On May 26, 2015 we were finally able to wire the money to our attorney and are eager to hear an update on our birth mom!