Getting Ready

We have completed our psychological and physical examinations and soon Doreen, our social worker, will come to our home to do her home visit--the last component of the homestudy process. That means we are finishing up some overdue home projects and starting to get "baby's room" looking like a room. (Later on, we'll focus on making it look like a baby's room... and even later on, we can work to make it our baby's room.) For right now, it just needs to look like a room. Somehow, since it was an unused room, it gathered all the tools and extra stuff that got used or moved around while we worked on remodeling the bathroom in February.

We have told almost everyone we know about our plans to adopt our first child from El Salvador and have received overwhelming support and prayers from our friends and family as we move through the paperwork process. We are approaching the start of our "year of study" while we wait for our child to be referred to us. We will be studying about

• parenting
• being a Godly family
• strategies for raising a bilingual famliy
• attachment and bonding
• El Salvador and Latin America
• Salvadoran traditions and cooking
• Latin American cultural resources in Connecticut
• ...and loads more!

El Salvador News Link

http://www.topix.net/world/el-salvador

This seems like it could be a good website to help keep updated on everything that's going on in El Salvador.

Vice President Escobar of El Salvador

On April 10, James left work a couple hours early and we hopped in the car and headed north toward Providence, RI for a lecture at Brown University. (1. Brown's announcement) The lecture was given by Vice President of El Salvador, Ana Vilma de Escobar (2.Wikipedia).

We learned a little bit about how the Salvadoran government has worked to improve their country since the end of their civil war in 1992. The Saca/Escobar administration, in particular has worked since 2004 in areas such as education, economic development, infrastructure and communications improvements, social welfare, and, as Escobar put it "empowering Salvadorans." (3.Brown Daily Herald article)

El Salvador is a special country for us and will only become more special in the months and years to come. What a treat to hear directly from one of its leaders about its progress in the last 15 years!

1. http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-124.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Vilma_de_Escobar
3. http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2007/04/11/CampusNews/Vice-President.Of.El.Salvador.Speaks.On.Fighting.Poverty-2834470.shtml

Not at all impatient

We are nearing the end of our time of gathering documents for our dossier. This week we have appointments for physical examinations and psychological evaluations. Then all that's left is

• the home visit by Doreen, our social worker from Catholic Charities (www.catholiccharitiesusa.org)
• applying to USCIS for "Advance Processing of Orphan" (www.uscis.gov) with our completed homestudy report.
• The USCIS (Citizen and Immigration Services) should then send us an appointment for fingerprinting.
• Once they approve us, we can send the whole dossier to America World (www.awaa.org) to be translated and submitted to El Salvador.

The the waiting begins. We have decided, though, that we will not be idly "waiting." Instead we will inaugurate our "year of study" about El Salvador, Parenting, Biblical parenting, Parenting adopted children, Raising bilingual children, Hispanic communities and events in New Haven and everything else that will get us as ready as possible to be and to raise a family.

That year will also be a year of prayer. (This has already begun.) We will dedicate ourselves (along with our families and friends) to praying for our child, his/her caregivers, his/her birth parents, the orphanage where he/she is living, the country of El Salvador, and our own preparation to be parents. Already, I feel sure that our child is alive in the world, on his or her own journey toward his/her home and family and our hearts. He or she is growing every day and learning new things. We trust that even as the Lord prepares us to receive our child, He is preparing our child to transition into our lives forever.

Our family and so many of our friends are already praying for us and our little one and supporting us through this journey. We all can hardly wait to meet you!