Selection Committee Questionnaires...

We submitted "Chloe's" info to an international adoption clinic at Tufts on Wednesday (they move fast- when I called on Wednesday afternoon, the woman asked me if it would be ok if they didn't get back to us with results until Friday since one of them would be out of the office on Thursday.  "Um, sure, I guess we can live with that.") and got their results on Friday.  Glad we bothered, they pretty much told us everything we already know.  Well, she did bring up things that we may want to have ruled out in the future, so that was helpful, I guess.  It was pretty much a formality on our part to make our agency happy anyway, so fine.  After I heard back from the clinic, I told Ramsey the results, then e-mailed Holt to say, "Yes, it's official, we definitely want to pursue this adoption, please send us the questionnaires."

So that begins our committee selection process.  We are working our way through the questionnaires (really hoping to get those completed this evening) then will send them in to Holt.  Holt will use those, and the draft of our home study, to assess whether we will be a good match for Chloe.  No pressure.  We are being asked how we came to the decision that adopting this particular child is the best decision for our entire family, how we will know when our family is complete, how we plan to help this child cope with racism and "white privilige",  how we will prepare this child for adulthood when she will not have the racial buffer of her caucasian family's presence, and what difficult behaviors we feel especially equipped or unequipped to handle and how we would deal with them.  We are being asked what experience we have with children with this special need (um, what are we supposed to say to that?  There aren't a lot of kids around here missing multiple limbs...), what services and support groups are available to help us meet this child's needs, what anxieties and concerns do we have about adopting this child, what are our hopes and dreams for this child and how would we feel if she never acheived these things, and so on, and so on, and so on... 



Prayer request update-  Ramsey has submitted a bid on a job that, if he gets it, would make a significant dent in our adoption fees. We'll hear sometime after the 18th if he gets it.  It would be a huge answer to prayer if he does, so please be praying!