That was an interesting 13 days...

I guess I spoke too soon on my last post about the meeting going well...

We were blind sided by our home study agency almost two weeks ago. That Tuesday evening we had our last home study visit in their office. When I say last, I mean ALL of my things were DONE. We were still waiting on our reference letters, but everything else was complete and once we were done meeting I was hoping to get our home study report back in two weeks.

We sit down and she tells us within 30 seconds that they will approve us to up to two children.

SLAPINTHEFACE...

You see... Monte and I haven't told very many people at all, but we want to be open to 3 (only if they are biological brothers) and the 2 can be unrelated or related. Our thinking is that if there are 3 brothers at the orphanage it would be hard for them to find a family, so we thought we would LOVE to be their family. We feel very strongly about being open to letting the Lord show us EXACTLY who He wants for our family.

Our social worker brought in the owner of the agency and that women could not see where we were coming from AT ALL! She told us she would NEVER approve us for 3 (keep in mind this is the first time we have talked to her face to face AND she doesn't know anything about our family) and she would approve us for 2 ONLY if they are biological.

The thing that we couldn't understand is that our social worker has known since our first meeting what our desires are, but she's waiting until the LAST meeting to let us know they wouldn't approve us.

We told them that we had to talk to our placing agency and see what they thought about all of this and we'd let them know our final decision on whether or not we would continue with them.

We left that meeting and I cried all the way home.

Monte called our placing agency and let them know what was going on and what they thought we should do. Their first response was to let them pray about it for a day and then they would get back to us {I LOVE THEM}.

She called Monte back on Thursday and told us that they would not have a problem referring us 3 children, because:
1. We already have a large family and are used to B I G numbers
2. We have already adopted internationally
3. We have already adopted multiple children at one time

B U T,

It would be a MIRACLE if we were referred a sibling group of 3. It just doesn't happen with our age parameters and with all of them having to be boys {we have many reasons for only being open to boys, sounds like another post to me}.

This past Wednesday we cut all ties with the home study agency and signed on with a new one on Thursday morning. Finding an agency that was open to our parameters was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, but we found THE ONE that we will use. We are both so relieved!

I got all the paperwork filled out on Thursday (there was a T O N) and mailed on Saturday morning. I have no clue what their time frame will be, but I have heard that they are semi fast.

Thank you so much for praying for our adoption. We know that the adoption process isn't always smooth sailing, but we both were not expecting a hiccup this soon in the process. We are thankful that it all worked out and we can continue to move forward!