Making my list and checking it twice

First of all, we want to take a second and thank everyone for all of the sweet messages, e-mails, texts, and phone calls this past month!  It feels so good to know we have so many people praying for this process and our sweet little girl in India!  We truly appreciate each of you and words of encouragement! YOU ROCK!

Well we are well on our way in this process! Monday, July 9^th, was a very busy day!  We traveled to Southeast Arkansas that weekend to get certified copies of our birth certificates, then on to Little Rock to get certified copies of our birth certificates and then to the Secretary of State’s office (which is awesome!) to get the documents apostilled.  Who knew that you would have to get a certified birth certificate even more certified than it already was, haha.  After that we drove to Conway and had lunch at Holly’s with our wonderful friends, Sarah and Tracy!  At 1:00 we started our home study! That includes one meeting at our agency’s office in Conway and one at our home! The first meeting went really well and we are really excited the next meeting is just around the corner: August 4^th!  For this meeting, they will just check out our house and make sure it is a safe place for a child then we will have 1-on-1 interviews and answer questions on child-raising techniques and discipline. It feels a little bit crazy since we have never raised a child before so any advice would be appreciated!

I sent in another huge packet of paperwork today to our adoption agency including birth certificates, another set of autobiographies, health insurance information, training material and much more! Whew! It feels good to get those things checked off this massive list!

My accordion organizer has been a lifesaver! 

Definitely recommend this for anyone going through the adoption process.

As we travel along this journey, God is constantly showing us that He is the one in control! Early last week I received an e-mail from the International Adoption coordinator we have been closely working with since we started the process.  She answers all of my questions and I’m pretty sure there was one week where I consistently e-mailed her with questions at least 3 times a day! She’s wonderful and so prompt with responses.  Sadly, she is retiring from the agency.  I was a little freaked out at first thinking about who might fill her spot and what if they weren’t very good or didn’t know what they were doing, and how that could slow down the adoption process.  I realized that something was out of my control and it scared me. But I was instantly comforted when I thought about who was really in control-not only in control of who will take this lady’s place, but who is in control of the whole process.  He knows exactly where in India our little girl is, how old she is, if she is still in her momma’s tummy, if she is being cared for physically & emotionally, and every little detail about her! I have no idea on any one of these things but it is so comforting that my God does!