The First Step

First let me just say THANK YOU!  Thank you for your kind words of encouragement and for your prayers as we begin this journey to bring our children home.  We are so thankful that you are coming along beside us as we start this process.  We are so excited and blessed to be answering this calling that God has placed on our lives.  There is joy in obedience.

Tonight we attended an information meeting with The Call, an organization that helps recruit Christian families to become foster families.  Their desire is that there be no waiting children in Arkansas Foster Care.  We are working with them to go through the training and become an approved home.  This is a faster route than going directly through the state.

At tonight's meeting we learned a little background information about The Call and then we met with a sweet lady, L, who works in a neighboring county DHS office.  She went over some of the rules of fostering/adopting with us.  She also went over A LOT of paperwork.  It was a lot of information in a short amount of time. We had read or heard a lot of what was shared with us tonight through our research which helped.

We filled out our paper work for background checks and turned that in tonight.  Now we just wait on L to call us and schedule our first home visit.  During this visit she will check to make sure our home meets certain requirements such as smoke detectors, windows in bedrooms, and things like this.  If they find anything that needs to be done or changed we will have until our final home visit to take care of those things.

The next training class that is offered will be in January.  It is 30 hours packed into two full weekends.  That will be our next step before our final home study.

We are just praying and trusting God to lead us through this journey.

I believe my children are out there waiting on me and I cannot wait to bring them home and love them for the rest of their lives.