Hey, friends! It’s been a while since I’ve written an official adoption update here, so I wanted to share what’s going on. We’re learning about this process as we go, so I’m going to attempt to share what we’re learning in hopes of giving you some insight into our process.
On January 8, our caseworker officially registered us on CARINGS! CARINGS is India’s adoption database. This means we’re waiting on CARA approval, which is basically initial approval from India. Right now, CARA approval is taking an average of 12 weeks (could be a little less, or it could also be more). Our 12 weeks will be around the first week of April, but I’m trying to keep my heart patient and not count down the days until that date, knowing God’s timing will be best.
Once we have CARA approval, we can be matched with our daughter! “Matched” means we’ll know exactly who our daughter is! We cannot wait for this day! However, being matched could take anywhere from 0-9 months once we have CARA approval. Though we’re probably a couple of months from being in the matching phase of the process, would you join us in praying for preparation and wisdom in that? The CARINGS database is filled with children in India who are available for adoption. Our agency will prayerfully search CARINGS for a child that meets our gender (girl), age (younger than Isaac), and medical special needs parameters. They’ll call us and give us some information about the child and ask if we would like to review her file. Once her file is reserved for us, we’ll have about 28 days to give our answer. Our plan is to spend these 28 days prayerfully considering the child’s file which will have medical and developmental information. We also plan on reaching out to our pediatrician and other experts who can help us discern her file best. Ultimately, we want to be sure we say “yes” to the child the Lord has best equipped our family to care for and love. Once we give our “yes”, we’ll sign some papers, and she will be our daughter!
Even after being matched, we’ll still have some time before we’re able to travel to India and bring her home. Like I said, we’re learning about this process each step of the way, so I don’t know what all will be needed after being matched, but I do know there will still be another 6-12 months before we’re able to travel and bring her home.
Friends, your prayers and support are so precious to us during this time. Here are some specific prayer requests:
- Pray we’d glorify God with patient and content hearts as we wait on CARA approval.
- Pray we’d receive CARA approval quickly (but we also trust that whatever timing God chooses will be his perfect will).
- Pray our hearts would be prepared for the matching process and for the Lord to pour out his wisdom on us and our agency.
- Pray for our daughter! She’s probably already alive (so crazy!). Pray for her health and care. Pray God would already be working in all of our hearts for bonding once she’s home.
- Pray for our daughter’s caretakers. Pray they’ll know Christ and love our daughter and the other children in their care with the his love.
- Pray for the Lord to continue to provide financially. We’re working on grant paperwork, so we pray we’ll receive some of these. We’ll begin to have lots of fees and payments due once we have CARA approval and have been matched.
Praises:
- We recently traveled to Birmingham for an adoption conference through our agency. We learned so much! It was also wonderful to meet so many sweet people from our agency face-to-face and other families who are in the adoption process too.
- God’s continued provision financially and for time to complete adoption tasks.
- Our biometric fingerprinting went quickly and smoothly.
- We recently got the chance to talk about our adoption at church. We’re so grateful and praise God for our church family who is so supportive and loves our daughter already!
I can’t wait for the day we can share we have CARA approval. Ultimately, I dream about the day we bring our daughter home and can share with her all of the wonderful people who already love her. Thanks for journeying with us, friends. As always, if there’s a way we can pray for you, then please don’t hesitate to let us know. We praise God for his great faithfulness!
diariesofadaughter.com 