What's Next?

   "So what happens now?" I get asked this question a lot now. I guess I should have put that in the last blog but I was so excited to announce our little girl I forgot most people don't know this process. 

   We are now waiting for the approval of the Thai government. This usually takes anywhere from 6-10 months but has taken up to year for a few families we know. Once they approve the match they will give us a court date. The court date means we get to travel to Thailand to pick up our little girl. Once we get to Thailand we have to be there for about 2 weeks. We will meet our daughter and take physical custody of her at that time. Then a few days later we meet with the Thai court. Once we have their stamp of approval we await the final visa approval and travel home with our little girl. At that point she will be ours but we still have some to get the adoption finalized in the US through our court system. That process usually takes about 6 months since we have to have some post-placement studies done by our social worker. The last step is we have to travel to the Thai Embassy in Los Angeles to register her there. 

   As you can tell it's quite the process but the important part is that hopefully by next year at this time she will be home with us. Everything after that is just a whole bunch of formalities. She will be somewhere around 2 years old when we bring her home. She will not speak English only Thai. So please keep us and her in your prayers. She doesn't know who we are or that we love her and want to take the best care possible of her and at the age she is she won't understand that either. Her foster family will show her pictures and do their best to prepare her but she still isn't old enough to understand what is going on really. She will have a significant grieving period when we bring her home while she tries to understand who we are and why we took from the only people she's ever known. We are going to have to help her to attach and bond with us as a family. I will probably write more about that later as it gets closer. It will be a hard time for the whole family but completely worth it because I know without a doubt God is in control and we are in the very center of His will for our family.