WE'RE HOMESTUDY READY!!!
The ball is now mostly in our court; we will spend all our waking hours pouring over photolistings from all over the country and networking with social workers. The plan is to get the word out as much as possible, but unfortunately there is a whole world of scammers and illegal 'selling children' activity out there, so we're trying to keep our contacts clearly within social worker domains. That means that if you hear of someone with a child available within our criteria, we would love to know... but we need to have either our social worker contact theirs or theirs contact ours; we don't want any random phone calls to our house! Please be considerate about that, as many of you know us personally.
If you are a (or have any connection to a) social worker, we have a one-page profile sheet that we'd like to share. We're looking for any kind of connection that may even be second- or third-hand just to get our name circulating; so far I've thought of educators, clergy, and pediatric medical professionals as contact sources as well as folks who are directly in the social or family services professions. Our profile sheet basically describes us in a nutshell and the kind of child (or children) we feel would fit our family well, and provides contact information for receiving a copy of our homestudy from Bert at Bethany. We can email it or snail-mail it to you, whatever is most convenient. Oddly enough, though we are definitely wanting to follow any leads, we are beginning outside of South Carolina because of the way in which the state to agency interactions work. This makes the networking a little more difficult since we can't just drop by to local places, so your willingess to help is truly valued!
Thanks so much for all your prayers and support. Keep it coming... the hard part's just beginning!
