Timeline

Many of you have asked questions like "When you you be able to bring your boys home?"  I thought I'd give you a timeline of this adoption to help you know how to pray for us.

We are adopting through a medical needs program from China.

January 19, 2015--Medical checklist received by our agency
March 23, 2016---Referral accepted for Josiah
April 1, 2016------Adoption application accepted
April 2, 2016------Home study began
April 5, 2016------LOI to China for Josiah
May 18, 2016-----Referral accepted for Gideon
June 6, 2016-------LOI to China for Gideon

Currently we have one document we are waiting for our home study provider to receive to complete the home study.  Brian also has to complete some financial info.  I requested the document a second time this week hoping to get things moving.  At the same time, I am assembling our dossier documents so that when our home study is completed, we can move forward ASAP.  Will you pray that we can get this completed in a timely manner?  Thank you all for your support of our adoption!  Here are some pictures of the boys just because that's what you're here to see, ha ha!

 

We just received the above updated picture of Josiah last week.

Zoom in on this picture of Gideon.  He is adorable and this picture is very telling of his personality.  He was uneasy around strangers with cameras, so they had to take this picture from far away.

In other news, we sent care packages to our sweet boys today.  They should receive them in 7-10 business days. I'm so excited!!!!

So where are you in the process?

We've had lots of people ask this question, "So where are you in the process?"  So I thought I'd take a moment to answer that.  :)  Because we were matched with two waiting children, we are completing a couple of steps at the same time.  Our home study is nearly finished and we are beginning to work on our dossier.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the China adoption process, our dossier is a huge binder of documents that we have to submit to China before they will begin on our adoption process from their stand point.  As of now, they have preapproved us to adopt Jing and Guang, but they require the dossier to officially approve us.

If you'd like you can pray for us as we complete this mound of paperwork.  Brian has some training to complete and another document that he has to complete in order for our home study to be signed off on by our home study agency.  Then, it has to be examined and approved by our adoption agency. After that, we can begin our application with USCIS.  We are already working on our dossier and compiling documents.  Please pray for understanding on my part as this is a bit overwhelming.  It is much more complicated than Nathanael's adoption was.

We also have some big fees coming up, so please pray that God provides.  If you feel led to help, there are a couple of ways you can do so.  We have a site where you can give and it's tax deductible.  www.adopttogether.org/shubertfamily  We love this ministry's heart for adoptive families.

We have t-shirts for sale until June 30th.  The story behind them is that God is calling us to be brave in stepping out to adopt our precious boys.  2 Timothy 1:7 is one of my favorite verses for putting my eyes on Jesus and not the situation.  "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind."  2 Timothy 1:7  You can find our shirts here if you're interested,  https://teespring.com/stores/shubert-adoption

Thank you so much for your support and your prayers!  We appreciate you all so much!

Adoption Surprises

I am sitting here reflecting on our journey with infertility and adoption.  We were married almost 10 years before we brought Nathanael home.  We started the process to adopt again in 2012 only to wait for 3 years to be matched.  Unfortunately, the program we were hoping to adopt from in Taiwan has never opened again.  We really hope it does someday soon.  But in January 2015, we filled out a medical checklist to adopt through the China special needs program. This was the first of many surprises for our family.  We had not been open to special needs adoption in the past, but God was opening our hearts and widening our horizons.  In April 2016, we got a call and received the file of the sweetest little 18 month old.  We accepted his referral and began our paper chase, home study and the whole journey.

We had selected that we were open to adopting two kiddos at the same time.  However, we were told that it rarely works out to be matched to two kiddos that can come home at the same time.  God was about to surprise us again.  In May 2016, we received a second call to be matched with a precious 3 1/2 year old.  They live in separate cities in the same province.  We were able to be matched with them before submitting our dossier, which means we will be able to bring them home on the same trip.  God is so good to us!  All this waiting...all my impatience..but GOD knew what he was doing.

We are so blessed and so thankful!  If you'd like to help us bring these sweet boys home, we have t-shirts we are selling right now.  You can order here...  Currently our shirts will be available through June 30th.  I'd love to tell you the story behind them.  2 Timothy 1:7 is one of my all-time favorite verses.  Agreeing to bring home two precious boys at once was definitely a step of faith.  God is reminding me to be brave and trust HIM to help bring these boys home.

We love you all and thank you for following our journey!  And just because these boys are precious, here's our version of a family photo ;)