Homestudy Approval Letter

This afternoon we recieved our approval letter from the adoption agency stating that our homestudy has been completed. From what I understand it has been completed for awhile now, but since we can't send in our dossier until November they have held it so that the homestudy would have a later date on it incase we have to renew it. The next step is for us to send the first set of fees. This is one of the struggles we have had this far into the adoption. We believe that we have this portion covered and are praying that we will recieve grants for the next set of fees. We have a meeting with our new social worker on Friday mainly just to get to know her better and for her to meet us in person. Since she is also an adoptive mother (who recieved a grant) she is going to help us to figure out which grants to apply for and hopefully she can tell us what she thinks our chances are of recieving help.

Justin and I have also become a little nervous about what the homestudy says regarding some of the issues we discussed with our first social worker. As you already know we have had some issues with our first social worker (lack of contact, misplaced documents, telling us documents weren't needed only to be most important) and since she is new to Bethany and the program is new we were concerned with the wording. Since we can not read the homestudy before sending the fees it made us a bit nervous so Justin called the program cordinator this afternoon to get a sense of ease about the situation. She told us that they have read over the homestudy several times and there is not one negative thing written in it.

During the converstation, she also mentioned that we were the first family to start the process and we will be the first family to complete the process. I am not sure exactly what this means. I do remember when we started this process, she told us we were the first family in Indiana to apply to Bethany for the Taiwan program. However, I don't see how we will (or how they know we will) complete the process first. Do they mean complete the dossier first, get a referral first, travel first, complete the adoption first? I don't know.

I believe our homestudy has been completed before others (not 100% it was first) but since we can't complete our dossier until November I don't see how we can complete the process first. Other's we know have been working on their dossier for awhile now and should be completed before November. Leaving me to wonder if they are just telling us this to make us happy. Also, how do they know we will finish first if we are chosen by a birthmother or caregiver? I know I am reading more into this than I need to, but I feel like we are being thrown through another loop.

I hope after we meet with our new social worker on Friday we will have a better understanding of what is going on and that she has some positive and encouraging news to give us.