Leila Update

Thanks to a friend who just returned from Niger we received this wonderful picture of our sweet Leila (in the middle). The 2 other sweet ones are also hopeful adoptees. Please keep these 3 and their adoption process in prayer.

Here's the latest on our own journey. After taking several days to relish the good news and share it with many of you, we've been busy busy wrapping up all the paperwork for our homestudy. We have been fingerprinted for background checks, laid out all our financial information, written individual autobiographies, answered 40+ questions about ourselves, each other, our marriage, our parenting beliefs, our values, our feeling on adoption and birth parents, etc. And we had already finished the 20 page application, CPS checks, agreements for things I can't remember, physicals, TB tests, employment verifications, tax returns, etc. And we are still not done, but we are really close. Hallelujah!! When we return from vacation, we'll have our final meeting with our social worker where she will interview us individually and then interview us together. Two weeks after that we will hopefully have a final and approved homestudy, which is required for the Nigerien government and the U.S.! In the meantime we'll also be working on the I-600a form for immigration.

So, what's happening in Niger? Well, the person assisting with adoptions on the Niger side is looking for Leila's birth certificate and searching for her birth father's death certificate. They are pretty confident he is no longer living. If he were alive we would have to get his permission and the chief of his tribe's blessing for the adoption, and then the mother's. Once they've pulled those things together, they will have Leila's birth mother sign an agreement and Geoff will have to go over to Niger to sign for the both of us. We are hoping we can coordinate this trip with a team that's going over or with some friends who are overseeing some construction over there.

Some of you have had a lot of good questions, so I'll try to answer a few of them here.

How long will it take? When will she be here?
We really don't know. Because there have been so few adoptions in Niger, we don't have a lot of precedent to look to as to what the Nigerien government will ask for and require. Plus there are so many factors (records, birth mother/father status, etc) that will determine the speed of the process, but we are optimistic it will be fast and realistic in our expectations that it could take a while.

Does she know?
No, she doesn't know for 2 big reasons. There is always the chance it could fall through, and we wouldn't want to upset the other children in the orphanage.

Do Mary-Michael and Frazier know?
Frazier is oblivious though he points to her picture at the bottom of the stairs and says "Leh-a". Mary-Michael has been praying for Leila and other orphans for months, and we pray each evening that God would bring her home. We likely won't share with them that she's actually coming home until we have a signed agreement from her birthmother.

Are you working with an agency?
No, so this is technically an independent, international adoption. However, we do have a coordinator in the U.S. and the Niger side that are helping to find information and guide us through the hoops to jump through and things to pull together to make our chances as high as they can be. I am already seeing how without them, this would be incredibly challenging. They are awesome.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support!