Here we grow again!

I love that saying.  

Before we left for China to add Lyric to our family, God had already placed it on our hearts for us to adopt again - but this time, He was/is leading our family to the country of Colombia!  (Hola!)  We even did all the research we could and had contacted agencies before we left to get Lyric.  We knew our family wasn't done growing, but we did want to make sure that Lyric attached well to our family (and us to her), so we put talk of the adoption on the "back burner" for a little while and focused on Lyric and our other children.

Everything in China and at home with our new family went really well - and starting the process to adopt was again often talked about - and prayed over.  It was never far from our thoughts.  We called a few more agencies and found out that most don't really like to even take an application to adopt until 6 months after a major life event, which is what adoption is considered. 

Despite that, I ended up finding one highly recommended agency, Children's Hope International, that said I could write a letter to their executive director to ask for an exception.  That letter was quickly written up - and approval was soon granted!

That was a few months ago... since then we have updated our home study, gathered all of our paperwork, had two sets of fingerprints done, put our entire dossier together, and sent it to our agency - they'll get it Tuesday morning.  All of that was no easy feat!  Hopefully, our agency will get all the paperwork they had to request and our dossier will head to Colombia on Wednesday!

We were told it takes about a week to 10 days for the paperwork to get to Colombia.

Then, the whole dossier will be translated and  submitted to the ICBF (Colombian Institute of Family Welfare).  That should put us at the end of July or the beginning of August.

Then, we wait for a referral for our new children. 

Yep, I said "children"!  After much prayer and talk, our family has requested to be approved to adopt a sibling group, up to 8 years old.  We did make the request that one be a boy (Tyler really needs a brother!), and one be a girl, but that is just a request and not a guarantee.  Sibling groups in Colombia where one child is age 8 or older are considered "special needs" and are quickly processed, being placed ahead of any considered "non-special needs".  The rest of this adoption could move pretty fast, and I hope you will follow along with us.

I'll keep you posted on any updates we get, but in the meantime I'll have to get some updated pictures of our family on here and fix up this blog a bit.  

In Christ,

Karen