6 months later...

Well, we are at our 6 month "anniversary" of officially starting paperwork for our adoption.  And truthfully, we are at least a good one year into the dreaming of it....  And today I can announce that we are OFFICIALLY ON THE REFERRAL LIST!!  Yeah!!!!!!
While it's super exciting to know we made it this far, there is also this feeling of... well, like a long exhale - a big sigh of contented-ness & resigned-ness at the same time (Yes, spell-check & all you English majors out there, I am completely aware those are not real words.... Sometimes you just need to make up words to help get your point across, k??)  :o)
We really are excited to feel like we are getting somewhere, but this month we also received word from our coordinator at our agency that Ghana truly is "slowing down" in terms of international adoption.  We are thankful for every step made to ensure adoptions from international countries are being done ethically & morally in the best interest of all those involved, but does it grieve our hearts to hear that the 6-9 month referral wait that we heard about 6 months ago is now looking like 12 months?... Yes... very much so... Our hearts are with our son  - whoever & wherever he may be.  It's difficult to explain really unless you've been there, but it always amazes me to see how the Spirit is working in the hearts of Ryan & I & our children.  Our oldest, was giving out kisses & hugs the other night around the dinner table.  As he finished those he could see, he lifted up his little arms to the sky & said he was giving them out to his brother-to-be, wherever he might be..... It's moments like that which remind me that GOD is the one doing this - only He can bring about a love like that for a little boy we have never even met.
Would you join us in praying that we would see the completion (in this case the arrival of our son on US soil) of our journey sooner rather than later?  That God would continue to move the people of Ghana to recognize the benefits of International Adoption & not be scared about the few questionable cases, but to be committed to searching out families who truly desire to love on & protect & provide a forever home/family to a child in need....
Here is where we are specifically for those who are wanting to know:
Our i-600a is sent off to USCIS as of today.  We are working to gather all the paperwork for our dossier in the meantime (although a lot of that was already done).  We are Number 3 on the Referral List in our small program within our agency.  They have purposely protected the Ghana program by keeping it small - they only accept certain families & a certain number of families.  The 2 families before us have been waiting over 6 months.
Lastly, I want to share a story as a recorded memory of this journey...  Yesterday, we had to get some paperwork notarized to send with our i-600a.  It's a longer story, but if we didn't get it notarized yesterday we would have had to wait until next week & everyone who has been through the adoption process understands the feeling urgency you have to do everything you can personally do as quickly as possible because then you are very dependent on others who have lots of other paperwork to get through!!  So, around 10:45am I found out that the notary who we use at the library was unavailable yesterday - like all day unavailable.  So I sent a FB shout-out to see if anyone could help.  I forgot to mention that we only had a small window of time that we could meet with someone (had to be between noon & 12:15 - weren't trying to be picky, just had a crazy day scheduled!) so time was a factor, but you can't really call up a notary & say "Drop everything so we can be there at noon."
Anyway, within minutes my home phone & cell phone starting ringing &  I got like 6 comments on the FB thread with leads for a notary!!  A friend of our families called & had literally nearly set everything up for us if we could be there soon, say around noon??   :o)  "Why, yes, yes that would be perfect!"  Did I mention it was with the Chief of Police??  So, I had an appointment set up for us with the Chief of Police within about 10 minutes & a list of 3 other notaries who were friends or acquaintances!!!     Here's what came to me as I drove away from that meeting with the Chief of Police whose notary license doesn't expire until Dec. 2016 (another very important piece of the puzzle that I wasn't sure would fall into place until we met him).... God knows..... This is no happen-stance, no coincidence.  If we had still been living in Indy going through this process, there is NO WAY everything would have been worked out within 10 minutes ready for the exact time we needed it, for free.... This happens when you live in small town & everyone you know knows everyone else you need to know and they implicitly trust each other.  "Oh, your wallet is lost?  Ok, well do you have another form of  picture ID, if not, it's okay, just show me all you've got..."  (We remembered I had my passport thankfully!!  And as a side note - if you want to pray with me about my missing wallet that would be awesome  - and I promise I'm not being cheeky when I say that - I am really praying for clarity to figure out where that dumb, important thing is!!!)  I'm thankful that we are in Morton for such a time as this!!