Monday, February 7, 2011

Big News!

Soo...  I mentioned a few weeks ago that a lot had been going on in our house and we would be sharing more details soon...  Mid-January we made the decision to change adoption agencies....  For several reasons, but the main one being time.  We had been told sometime early January that our wait for a referral was lengthened and we starting praying for direction  and clarity.  We were unsure if we were supposed to "wait it out" or start researching other options.  After much praying, research, and phone calls we made the decision to sign on with West Sands Adoption Agency (located in Utah).  This was one of the agencies in our "top list" we had originally considered back in June/July 2010 when we started the adoption process. After MUCH research (if you know Drew at all- you completely understand this!) and talking with other families who have used West Sands, we feel very comfortable with our decision and the switch to West Sands which we know is an ethical agency, just like Holt.

And for those of you who will surely ask- YES we did have to redo our dossier.  Luckily, our homestudy transferred, but we had to completely start over on our dossier since all the documents needed to be notarized and certified originals.  Amazingly, we rounded up all our documents within 2 days!!  LOTS of running around (Drew even drove to South Bend one evening to pick up our homestudies rather than having them mailed) and LOTS of notarizing (thankfully we know several notaries who went above and beyond to help us out).  Long story short, we have been on the waiting list with our new agency for several weeks and couldn't be more excited!!  Our new agency doesn't give out numbers, so this will be a little different, but we know we started out at about #10 on the list and expect that we have moved up slightly since getting on the list (very exciting since we were #52 when we made the decision to switch agencies).   We were told we could expect a referral in 2-6 months, so we are anxiously awaiting that phone call!!  Thank you to everyone who continue to be a support and encouragement throughout this emotional process!  We appreciate all your prayers for our baby girl and look forward to introducing you to her once we get to see her beautiful face!

Dossier #2- we are pros at this now!! 

4 comments:

  1. The Lord is great in directing our path and ordering our steps. Continue to trust Him with everything. We will continue to be praying for you all!!

    Love from Ohio

    Barb

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  2. We switched agencies too (because of a waiting child on another agency's listing)...and had to re-do most of our paperwork, including our home study. Good luck with the new wait!

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  3. Hope you get a referral soon! We seriously considered changing, but in the end decided to stay. Hope all goes well and things move quickly!

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  4. Congrats! You are now the only other family I know going through West Sands. I have found some blogs of others who have used them in the past, but haven't found many that are with them currently. Our dossier arrived in ET yesterday! We are still waiting on our 171, hoping it comes any day now... we'll see! It will be fun to follow your journey! Congrats on the move! Tara

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