New Steps

It's been awhile since we posted. We always get asked how things are going and most of the time, we don't have any updates. But today is November 18 and it's National Adoption Day, so we thought we'd give what update we can. 

Yesterday, we received the verbal notification from CARA, the Central Agency for Adoption in India that our adoption has been approved. This is great news! We have to wait for the written notification, then her birth certificate to be approved, then we can request a passport for her, and then if all those steps go through, we can book our travel. 

If all of those steps go in the best case scenario timeline, we could travel by early January. This is always what we had in the back of our minds, but it's exciting to see that there is progress. There have been some rumblings in the Indian government that they were going to be slowing international adoptions down, but thankfully, our paperwork has still continued to be processed. Despite government strikes, holidays, and layers and layers of bureaucracy. God has continued to be sovereign over everything. 

Thank you, thank you for following us on this journey. It's not glamorous or fast-moving, but we feel your prayers. We appreciate your interest and questions and always thank God for people who care for our family. 

Update

It's been a little while since we updated everyone on where we're at with the adoption. It's always a little emotional and rollercoaster-like when we're going through the referral process. Just as a recap, we were approved right before Thanksgiving 2016 to be eligible to adopt in India. Since then, we've been waiting to be matched with a child. 

For the past 30 days, we've been considering an official referral for a little 9 month old girl from Bangalore (also known as Bengaluru). We've had 2 other official referrals that we've declined since December and 3 that our adoption agency asked us to consider, but didn't give an official referral. 

Sugunaa is our 3rd referral. In the past, when we've received a referral, we've sent any information we receive from the orphanage to the University of MN adoption clinic. The doctors there review it and give recommendations. The first 2 official referrals were very clearly no from the medical perspective. The referral with Sugunaa has actually been even more thorough since we sent her information to the U of M, University of Wisconsin, and the cleft lip/palate surgeons at Gillette. The consensus has come back that besides the cleft lip/cleft palate, she's otherwise healthy. So, since we haven't felt any doors closing in this referral, we had to decide on Monday whether we'd formally accept the referral and move forward. 

With a lot of prayer and support from our family and friends, we did accept the referral. 

This means that she's officially out of the system and "intended" for our family. It's a little anticlimactic because although we're excited and feel really peaceful about it, we're still a little guarded, as we have been this whole process. We just take it one day at a time and pray the Lord opens the doors that need to be opened and closes the doors that need to be closed. But we are excited and pray that things will continue to move forward. 

I've had some Frequently Asked Questions already pop up, so I thought I'd answer them right away. 

Q: What are the next steps? A LOT MORE PAPERWORK. Which, as I've mentioned in this blog, is my least favorite thing to do ever. Some more apostilling. Some more visits to the immigration offices and the secretary of state. I think we're so guarded in this, when normally we'd be jumping out of our skin, because we've been working through this for over a year. It's probably similar to April the Giraffe. Is it really going to ever happen? Will there actually be a baby at the end of this? http://www.kens5.com/news/local/giraffewatch-april-the-giraffe-facts-and-live-feed/417040765

We are going in with our eyes open and a pretty clear understanding that there will be many hardships ahead with the process. It is encouraging to now be able to put a face to an actual little girl we've been praying for this year. So in that way, it is easier than where we have been. 

Q: What's the timeline? The official timeline for us getting cleared to fly over and pick her up is 7-11 months. Based on Gillette's assessment, we have requested that they don't do the cleft palate surgery in India. So that could potentially speed things up since they want to do that surgery when the child is around 15 - 18 months old. 

Q: How long will you have to stay in India when you go pick her up? The timeline they have given us is 10 - 14 days in country. I've heard sometimes down to 7, but rarely past 2 weeks. We won't be bringing the boys with us since it's such a long flight and we have to be going from one part of the country to Delhi to finalize the guardianship. 

Q: Will you keep her name? We will be changing her name to something in the same thread as the boys. A Christian influencer who we admire. But since we've only had boys, we're starting at zero. We have no girl names up for discussion. So anyone you admire or respect that has positively influenced the spread of the gospel and Christianity, we're open to suggestions. We will likely have some connection with her original name or the Indian culture, since that's so important to protect. But we do want her to feel part of the naming traditions we have already. 

Q: What do the boys think? This is a hard question to answer. They obviously know we're adopting and have been a big part of the process, but we have really kept the referral process away from them. It's confusing looking at pictures of these precious kids, but then not knowing why now it's a different little girl we're considering. So, we've kept it pretty quiet. But every night we sing Jesus Loves Me to the boys, but instead of saying Jesus love "ME", we say, Jesus loves "Haddon, Schaeffer, Casper, Little Sister, Mommy, Daddy" Super fast, so still in that syllable timing for "me." They think about it and talk about it, but it's not real to them quite yet. 

Q: Does she have an August birthday, like the majority of the rest of your family? No. Still a summer birthday, so Casper's on his own in November, but not August! 

Thank you all for your continued prayers. We are so blessed by them. We'll continue to keep you updated as we know more. We're praying for peace and clarity as we continue moving forward.

Here are a couple of pictures of Sugunaa:

She will likely have to get a some adjustments for her lip and then surgery for her palate. It's absolutely amazing what cleft lip/palate children go through. We've been very thankful to be able to talk to so many families who have adopted children with CL/CP and they have all said the kids are amazing survivors. They find ways to compensate so they're getting the nutrients they need. One mom said their son would place two fingers on his palate while he was drinking milk to make sure it was going down the right tube. He was only 15 months old at the time.  

What's next

Some of the things we're waiting on right now are more medical records from the orphanage. We know BG (Baby Girl) has ROP, or Retinopathy of Prematurity. It's a very common condition, especially in developing countries.

We were able to find the contact information for an Ophthalmologist we went to Bethel with. He has been so great to look through what medical records we do have and try to give us some recommendations. We really have to wait for more information, but we're praying for guidance in these decisions. 

It's absolutely heartbreaking saying no to a referral. To a child. We know that the opportunities for good medical care are so limited in the rural areas of India. We have to be so mindful of trusting God in his faithfulness with potentially severe disabilities. While, also being aware that it's not just us we're thinking of. We have 3 boys whose lives will already dramatically change with adoption, even without adding health issues. 

We will of course be matched with a child that will need care and we're so thankful and blessed to live in a state with some of the best medical care in the world. Mortenson has great insurance, the U of M and Mayo are a short distance away. We're so blessed with good health care options. So we are definitely open to understanding the depth and breadth of care needed in any child. 

There is definitely more to come, but we would absolutely love your prayers as we're making difficult decisions. 

Thank you!

30 days

So, while we were trying to figure out where to go with Mahek's records, Laura emailed us again. Last Friday, the 9th, we received our first formal referral. We're in a 30 day review period for a little girl, who is about 16 months old. Ironically, she was born on Schaeffer's birthday, August 18, just 5 years later. We asked Schaeffer right away how he felt about that and he was so excited. If you know our family, if we do add another August birthday to our family, we may as well just take the entire month of August off for the amount of celebrations we have. 

18th - Schaeffer

18th - Baby Girl 

19th - Jenn

22nd - Jenn and Luke's anniversary

28th - Haddon's birthday

On Luke's side of the family, that's just the tip of the iceberg. 

21st - His aunt

22nd - His 1st cousin

23rd - His Grandma

Luke's mom is a saint! She never forgets anyone during those crazy 10 days. Adding another birthday in the mix might put her over the edge. 

Updates, Updates, and More Updates

I haven't posted on here because we've been in waiting periods and Thanksgiving and Christmas time are crazy. But there have been great updates the past few weeks in our adoption process. We submitted everything in October and the estimated waiting time is 6 - 8 weeks to get approval. 

We were notified the Tuesday before Thanksgiving that India approved us as adoptive parents! This is a huge hurdle to achieve. They didn't even ask for additional paperwork or make us redo any, which is shocking.

We had a call with our social worker later that same day. She told us it would be possibly 4 - 6 months before we would be matched with a child. With only about 700 children on the registry on any given day, it's really hard to find a child who is under the age of 3 with minimal health needs. With 20 - 30 million orphans in India, this is tragic. But it's the place we're in right now.

Laura, our social worker, let us know that there was a little girl already in the system the day we were approved. Her name is Mahek and she will be 1 in February. We've spent a significant amount of time  trying to figure out how severe her kidney issues are.

We didn't have a formal referral for her, so we were in this weird limbo of whether we should submit her medical records to the U of M adoption clinic. Instead, we tried to get some minimal guidance from doctors who could just give us a simple, "yes, this is a treatable illness, or no, this is a lifetime of dialysis and transplant." We found a clinic that was so willing to help, until their business office got involved. Then, they said they could only advise us if we had her on our insurance. Kind of the point! She's of course not on our insurance plan. We hit a little bit of a dead end, at that point.

So, then, we were waiting again....

The light at the end of the tunnel

We're starting to see the light at the end of the proverbial paperwork tunnel. I spent most of the last two weeks chasing down dossier forms, which are a slightly different version of all the forms we had to submit during the application process. It's grueling. But we have one more document needing to be notarized and apostilled (that's a real word) by the Secretary of State. We make 3 color copies of the whole thing and drop it off at Children's Home Society to be sent on it's way to Delhi. So close!

Haddon's letter and drawing of our house with he and his little sister. It says: 

Dear Little Sister,

I love you very much and hope to meet you soon. I am very happy we are adopting you. Love Haddon Carlson, Age 8. 

So sweet! And required by the Indian government. So it has practical purposes, too. 

My worker buddy. We spend more time in offices begging people to re-fill out paperwork or give us records in a very specific way. He's a trouper and never complains. Last Friday, he did have a little breakdown. We were at the Secretary of State office for 2 hours. They kept telling us it'd be just a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes. 2 hours later and the state accidentally giving every single piece of confidential information about our entire family to someone else. Our passports, driver's licenses, SS cards, birth and marriage certificates, 3 years of tax forms, background checks, police clearance, fingerprint paperwork, medical reports. Pretty much an identity thief's dream. 

Thankfully, the people who were given our paperwork brought it back about 15 minutes later. And are hopefully not thieves.

So close to being sent off to India! This is the dossier paperwork. 

Not to forget the application, training, immigration, and homestudy paperwork!

The picture of our living room and our family to be sent to the Indian government. Cheese! 

Soup, Football, Family and Friends

We had so much fun Saturday, October 8 for the soup/flag football fundraiser. We have the greatest family and friends who, without question, love and support us completely in this journey. Thank you to all who could make it. We played a lot of flag football, we ate a lot of soup, and we had so many wonderful people join us. Luke is still sore. He had the boys rolling pin his hamstrings a couple of days ago. We need a training program for next year's game. 

The football players.

The location was gorgeous and Shelli and Jeff and their girls spent so much time making it look fall and festive. 

Look at that spread! We had 11 different soups to taste test and vote for a winner. 

The winners of the soup cook-off. Marcia (Luke's mom) and John Pals (Shelli and Jeff's good college friend. John made Iowa surprise and Marcia made a killer coconut curry soup. Delicious! 

The greatest friends I could ask for in life. This is not even all of them. We've been meeting for a Bible Study every other Monday for the past 12 years. We've been through weddings, births, losses, cancer, joyful times, hard times, and everything in between. What a gift to have these Godly women in my life! 

Our family. Waiting for our girl!

My girl Shelli. She planned, organized and hosted this amazing day. And she rocks a fanny pack like no other. Love you, bud!