Adoption Update 4/18/12

In my last post about our adoption process, we found out that our time in IBESR could be as short as 2 months.

I will admit I was a little skeptical, after having been in IBESR for 10 1/2 months with Elijah & Josephine's adoption. Even so, when the two months came and went a week and a half ago, I was a little disappointed. You try hard to not get your hopes up, but you do. But then when the thoughts of disappointment come, the very next thought is, duh!, it's probably not likely - we've been through this before - we have no idea how long it'll be. Then back to All in God's timing. The back-and-forth thoughts are endless!

I tried to use the time praying, instead of dwelling on the process itself. I printed the list of kids in process, and prayed over each one, for their families, the GLA staff caring for them, their waiting families, and the offices that dossiers go through waiting for signatures or other action.

So a week and a half after our 2 months passed, I had gotten busy and gotten beyond that disappointment. Much to my surprise, I had an email today around lunchtime that we had a message from our adoption agency on our portal page on their website. From my phone I could only see part the subject line: "New Message from Bethany: Ou...". Turning my phone sideways revealed the remainder of that subject: "...t of IBESR!" I couldn't believe my eyes. I immediately logged in to our portal page to read the rest of the email. I think I had to read that email three times because I was so excited!

Then I called Jock. I asked him if he was at work or at home. He was working at home. I asked him if he was sitting down or standing up. He was sitting. I asked him if he was ready to start screaming. He said, "News about our adoption?" Um, yup - we're out of IBESR!!!

So here's the details... We were one of several families adopting from GLA, whose dossier exited IBESR at the same time. GLA is going to coordinate travel schedules between all the families, and probably prioritize which families travel first based on when they entered IBESR - a couple of these families have been waiting since last summer because they needed dispensation. But even so, we anticipate we'll travel "within the next three weeks or so". Yup, very specific. We were asked to let our agency know which week(s) would work better for us, so we're officially working on travel plans!

We can't wait to travel to Haiti again, and to meet our youngest son!