It's been a couple of months since we last posted an update, and we thought that you may be wondering what we have been up to.  Since our home study was approved in mid November, Tina and I have looked at hundreds of waiting kids' profiles.  It is not easy to look at all those kids and read a little bit about them, to know these kids are waiting for their forever family, and knowing that they may never find that forever family.  It can be quite heartbreaking at times.  

Each narrative about the children is different.  Some are longer than others.  Some tell more about the child while others do not say much at all.  For the first month, we only looked at the waiting children on the state websites or the ones the state uses.  Before we even started the process, we knew our limitations.  As I said before, we were looking for a child or sibling pair (of the same gender- they have to share a room) under 10 years of age.  Since we both work full-time and cannot afford to have only one of us work (and we both know that God has called us to the jobs we have), we cannot adopt a child that needs 24/7 care or a child that needs a stay at home parent.  As you go through the profiles, you sometimes have an idea of what the needs of the child.  Therefore, a child that needs to be the only child in a family won't work or one that can be in a house with other children but they have to be much older won't work either.  There are others who are not allowed to leave the state they are in or the workers are not looking for an out-of-state family.  Others need to have visits with siblings regularly and therefore would need to travel fairly regularly, which cannot work with our schedule.  

After our (Tina, Liam, and I) initial searching through the state websites, Tina being the super organized one created a Google sheet of the child that we wanted our social worker to inquire about.  There were about 23 children on the initial list.  Our social worker would send an email to the contact provided on the website, and usually inclued our approved home study.  From that initial list, we heard back from a number of kids.  Usually, the case worker (or other contact person) would either say that our family was not selected for the child or they would send a longer narrative of the child.  Out of those children whose longer narratives we received, we tried to move forward with a couple but found out that we were not selected.  

In mid December, we decided we should check out some of the other websites that the adoption agency provided us.  One of them was Adopt US Kids.  After the initial hours of work that were needed to create a profile on the website, it has been a great resource.  It has profiles of children all over the United States.  Once you create a profile, it sends you a list of potential matches.  We went through those matches, and found some that we wanted to inquire about.  The one thing that we haven't liked so much about the website is having to add the children to "My Favorites" list.  That just seems a little off to us, but it is understandable.  After added to that list, you can "Make an Inquiry."  The contact person for the children respond (or not) to your inquiry either requesting a home study, saying that your family was not selected, or informing you that the child is on hold.  Our social worker would send our home study to anyone that requested one.  Some would also ask you to fill out paperwork specific for their state in addition to the home study.  Some took an hour or two to fill out. 

I have to admit that I was quite addicted to this website for a little while.  I would check it every couple of hours to see if there was any communication or any new matches.  We knew that this was going to be a long process.  We have seen some glimmers of hope as our home study/family has been selected among others to review for children.  Also, we received a call from a few people in one state asking to have a Zoom meeting with us in the near future.  We scheduled that for the earliest time that the case worker was available (late February).  We are still waiting to hear back from many others.  

Through it all, Tina, Matteo, Liam and I have been praying.  We know that God will lead us to the child(ren) that God has picked out for our family.  We also are so thankful for all of you who have been praying with and for us.