I thought I would take minute to update everyone on where we are at in the adoption process. Yesterday we had our home visit which is where our social worker comes into our home and walks threw it with us making sure we have a safe and positive home environment to bring a child into. She, Andrea, and her intern, Hillary were here for a little over an hour and we were able to finish up our final paperwork at the same time.
Now we just need to wait for Andrea to finish writing up all the things that I guess go into a home study so that we can review it and get it ready to be finalized. We have one final group training meeting that we are required to attend but we have to wait until the end of March since it is only offered every other month. Once we finish that group meeting our home study will officially be complete!
We have been praying about which agency the Lord would have us apply to since that is the next step in the process and one we want to get moving on as soon as possible. Quite honestly this is been the most difficult part so far. There are hundreds of agencies out there and it is hard to know which ones are good and which ones should be avoided. Jesse and I realized that we wanted to go with a Christian adoption agency so that did help weed out several of them from the list. It has been a challenge to try and explain our hearts to Andrea (our caseworker doing our home study) who we fell really does not understand our faith. We have found an agency out of North Carolina that we are planning on sending a preliminary application to and let me tell you it has been refreshing already answering question for them. They asked us to start with our testimony and how and when we asked Jesus to come into our lives! Yeah! Though we won’t know for a few weeks after we send the first application to them if we can work with them or not, we are still excited to be moving forward towards adopting.
I imagine we still have a long road ahead, paperwork wise as well as just waiting. We are excited though, realizing that we are actually in this process! To God be the glory!
Life has a way of moving in fast forward but we are hanging on for the ride and enjoying it! We realize it has been a while since we updated last so we thought we would take a few minutes to get you up to speed as to the happenings in our life!
We are over half way done with the home study process and starting to get more and more excited about the possibility of adopting! We still have some training materials to complete but once that is done we really just need to decide on an adoption agency to continue. We have researched a few but have yet to make our final decision.
If you are a coffee lover, or know someone who is, and would like to help support us in the adoption process you can buy some coffee here https://justlovecoffee.com/JesseAndApril We will get roughly $5 for every bag that you order which will go right to our adoption fund!
The kids continue to have an energy all their own and we try our best to keep up with them and build lasting and meaningful memories. Here are some pictures to highlight a few….
Jesse arranged for a time when some of the smaller staff kids could get on the hill when it wasn’t packed full of more experienced skiers. The kids LOVED it and skied for almost an hour and a half!
The excitement and energy at camp this past weekend was just thrilling! Nearly 150 junior high campers came for MELTDOWN! and enjoyed all sorts of activities, food, and discussions. It was a blast to work with the kids and create a video in the short time!
The Lord decided we needed some snow and the other day we got 18 inches overnight! There was (and still is) SO much snow that Jesse thought it would be fun to build them a snow fort. The kids (and Jesse) dove right in and enjoyed making it.
Thanks for taking the time to read our update. We appreciate your support through prayer and those that are able to contribute financially. We could not do it without all of you!
It seems only right, that in order to be a true Wisconsinite, one must experience the excitement of Ice Fishing at least once a year! For some reason, when I woke up this morning, I had the bug to get out on the ice with Jack. So, I did the only thing that was a sure bet to get some fish in the bucket… I called Adam Beasterfield. Anyone who knows Adam would know that I made the right call!
Jack has never been ice fishing before, so I asked if he would like to come with. He was thrilled!
After about two hours on the ice, we had caught nearly 30 good sized bluegills. Several of them were even over 10 inches!
Jack - learning from the master
Lauren was bummed that she couldn’t join the Guy Time, but she did help us clean the fish at the end of the night.
