One Step Closer!

Hip hip hooray! We are finished with the application! It was not an exciting job (in Jason’s words “This is boring”), but it was necessary for the process to start. Here is a glance at what we had to fill out:

General information about ourselves: name, aliases (Jason Bourne and Jennifer Gardner- oops those are different aliases), address, age, race, profession, and income.

Health history: medical history about us and our parents. We had to get physicals for both of us along with a list of medication that we have taken in the last 3 years. Fawnda had to get a letter from her doctor stating that she has been tested and treated for infertility, and Jason got writer’s cramp filling out all of his medical information (hmmm – writer’s cramp – should we have put that on his medical history info???)

Family information: name, age, marital status, number of children and profession for each our siblings.

Home/community information: description of our home, resources around our community (medical clinics, shopping, parks, libraries, churches, community center, etc.) and ethnic breakdown for our city.

Information about our adoptive child: general information about what kind of child we are looking to adopt, what room we are planning on for them in our home, what supplies we have or will get for our child (car seat, crib, etc.).

Recommendations: We had to ask 3 of our friends to vouch for us and write letters of recommendations. They could not be family (related to us that is- we definitely feel that these friends are like family). We truly appreciate the time that these friends took to write these letters for us - we cannot thank them enough.

We also had to make copies of birth certificates, marriage certificates and tax forms.

Background checks: We had to get finger printed and sign several forms permitting them to do a full FBI background check. (I hope they don’t find out about that one thing with that guy at that place! Shhhhhhh) : )

So we have now finished another step!! Now, we must wait for them to review the application, and then we will receive some dates for our Pre-Adoption Classes (PAC), which is a 2 day workshop for educating prospective adoptive parents on the whole process (before, during and after). We are looking forward to attending this workshop soon!!

Please pray that the agency will review our application quickly and that all will go smoothly. Pray for the PAC experience for us, that we will learn a lot and that it will encourage us to go further in the process. Pray that we will not get overwhelmed with the next steps. We hear that the paperwork mentioned above is nothing compared to what is about to come. Yikes.