welcome to our blog!

Hello Friends and Family!

Thanks so much for checking out our blog! We're so close to being ready to get our kiddo(s)... As some of you may have heard, some of our adoption plans have changed!

Since January, we've been training with Project 1.27 getting ready to do our adoption through the foster care system here in Colorado. We're working with Bethany Christian Services as our agency and they started our homestudy on June 10th.

Please allow me to give you a quick vocabulary lesson before I continue telling you what has changed...

Legally Free = kiddos who are in the foster care system and their parents rights have already been terminated by the courts. In this case, the kiddos will be placed in a permanent home and will be able to be adopted approximately 6 months later.

Legal Risk = kiddos whose parents rights have not been terminated and it could take up to a year and a half to do so... then adoption can follow. In this case, you can be placed with these kiddos and they can be taken back to return to their family at any time. In Colorado, they have a wonderful law for kiddos 6 and under... Parents of kiddos 6 and under must complete their "rehabilitation plan" within 12 months of losing their kiddos or the courts will begin their pursuit for termination of rights. After that, the kiddos are free for adoption.

Anyway, Bethany Christian Services, due to budget cuts, has put their entire Legally Free program on hold. This means, that in order to stay with Bethany we cannot pursue legally free children. Josh and I were very surprised and caught off guard with this news as we were hoping for legally free kiddos. (We're open to girls, boys, black, white, purple, blue... and we're open to a sibling pair ages 6 and under.)

Bethany gave us two options: Leave Bethany and start over with a new agency (a ton of paperwork, new background checks and fingerprints, a total loss of about 2 months of time)... or we could stay with Bethany and be open to only being placed with legal-risk kiddos. We had to make our decision as quickly as possible in order to avoid any further delays in our homestudy scheduling.

After I got the call from our adoption process manager about these changes, I was surprised at an overwhelmingly peaceful feeling that I couldn't shake. When I called and told Josh all the information and then told him about the peaceful feeling I had, I told him, "I can't believe I'm not crying and really upset about this. I even tried to convince myself to cry about it." When I got home, we talked for a long time, prayed, talked, prayed, talked, prayed, slept, talked, prayed... and then called Bethany that next morning to ask a few crucial questions we had come up with and then told them our decision... We want to stay with Bethany and pursue legal-risk kiddos.

Immediately following, we were assigned a new adoption process manager (which is a bummer right now because we loved the one we had) and are awaiting a call from them to set up the remainder of our homestudy and home inspection. Then, it takes approximately 2-4 weeks for the licensure to happen... and THEN, we're ready for placement!

Josh and I are both in awe of God's amazing comfort for us in all this and we are so grateful that He is sovereign! We know that it's very possible that we could lose whatever kiddos are placed with us, but we need to remember the reason we are doing this in the first place... It's not just that we want children because let's face it, there are easier ways to do that! We are doing this because we felt God's call to help these orphans in the best way possible! This is NOT about us! This is about helping these kiddos and if that means we have them for 2 months, fine! 80 years, great! God is in control and we are submitting ourselves to Him in this and all situations of our lives.

Thanks again for reading our blog... This post will be the longest by far that I ever post, I promise! Please let me know if you'd like to be notified by email each time we update the blog. (email me at hmrobertson625@yahoo.com) You can also comment on the post by clicking on the "comments" link below each post.

Your prayers are incredibly important to us... pray for our patience and peace... And pray for our kiddos, wherever they are.

Josh and Heidi Robertson