Coming home and having to realize what was happening was so incredibly excruciating! We were trapped in a world where people were out for themselves and their jobs. Adoption. It is supposed to be about the children. We have slowly been discovering this is not always the case. Agencies who claim to not be adoption agencies acting in ways that are presenting them as adoption agencies. People who will literally throw you under the bus if it means saving their adoption. Social workers who were more focused on the fact that "this is my job and reputation" rather than seeing children come home to the family who has worked so hard to bring them home. Care givers who lie to you and think you do not know any different. Care givers who betray trust and confidentiality. I was glad our oldest daughter was not home to witness the pain her parents were going through and to not have to witness the deceit of someone she considered to be like a big sister to her. She did not need to see that people could be so ruthless and cold hearted. She still needs to enjoy her youth because as she gets older she will soon discover the sinful nature of humankind runs deep. For now, I want my daughter to enjoy life. A friend of mine reminded that God is bigger than all of this and all of them. She has prayed daily and hourly for us. In fact, hundreds of people have been doing just that:PRAYING!! Oh, we know who each person is who has deemed themselves so pure that they can cast out lies on others in hopes of making themselves look even better and they will be exposed in my next post.
I began what was to be 5 days of phone calls. Logging over 100 hours on the telephone not to mention 10 nights of less than 3 hours sleep in hopes of finding information to help us and gathering any information we could. My weight began dropping off at a pretty fast rate. My eyes were swollen and my head throbbed like a church bell sounding off on Sunday morning. The days began with calls to agencies and social workers asking for someone to please hear us and accept us as their client. Many prayers were sent up for just this and despite what our care giver, social worker, US agency, and Bulgarian agency set out to do, God led us to a social worker and agency who both agreed that while yes we should have disclosed certain pieces of info they did not believe it warranted the drastic action that was taken by Jenna, Deborah, and Elena especially when not a single one of them validated the information before they took action nor did they even come in person to check the validity of the information. VICTORY #1 Certain documents would be needed to really present the information in a thorough and well explained manner. Within less than 2 days over 30 letters of reference from individuals such as lawyers, well known doctors, social workers, teachers, church staff, reliable care givers who are in our home every day of the week, friends, coworkers, relatives, law enforcement officers came pouring in to our new and very thorough social worker. We had every piece of paper she asked of us and then some to her before she even had the ink dry on her paperwork. Oh and just so you all know, I did this while taking care of my children!!
I also spoke with USCIS and the person in charge of adoptions. It was explained to us that we could be given another chance to apply for our I800A and receive approval. All information that was sent to our new social worker was also sent to USCIS so they too would have more than just "anonymous email" to base their decisions off of. We received word that we would indeed get a second chance to submit a new home study with supporting documents but had only 30 days in which to do so. VICTORY #2
We also found an agency who listened to our story and also could not believe that another agency would take the word of "anonymous people" before fully examining the facts and situation. Our new case worker at our new agency stepped right up and told us we had a battle in front of us but it was one she thought we needed and could face. She also lined up our Bulgarian agency who also was willing to fight this battle with us. VICTORY #3
For me, at this point, the greatest victory was that of the love and faith of my friends! Even though a couple trusted individuals betrayed my trust I still had the prayers of my friends. Prayer is what brought us this far and prayer would see us to the end. VICTORY #4
I began what was to be 5 days of phone calls. Logging over 100 hours on the telephone not to mention 10 nights of less than 3 hours sleep in hopes of finding information to help us and gathering any information we could. My weight began dropping off at a pretty fast rate. My eyes were swollen and my head throbbed like a church bell sounding off on Sunday morning. The days began with calls to agencies and social workers asking for someone to please hear us and accept us as their client. Many prayers were sent up for just this and despite what our care giver, social worker, US agency, and Bulgarian agency set out to do, God led us to a social worker and agency who both agreed that while yes we should have disclosed certain pieces of info they did not believe it warranted the drastic action that was taken by Jenna, Deborah, and Elena especially when not a single one of them validated the information before they took action nor did they even come in person to check the validity of the information. VICTORY #1 Certain documents would be needed to really present the information in a thorough and well explained manner. Within less than 2 days over 30 letters of reference from individuals such as lawyers, well known doctors, social workers, teachers, church staff, reliable care givers who are in our home every day of the week, friends, coworkers, relatives, law enforcement officers came pouring in to our new and very thorough social worker. We had every piece of paper she asked of us and then some to her before she even had the ink dry on her paperwork. Oh and just so you all know, I did this while taking care of my children!!
I also spoke with USCIS and the person in charge of adoptions. It was explained to us that we could be given another chance to apply for our I800A and receive approval. All information that was sent to our new social worker was also sent to USCIS so they too would have more than just "anonymous email" to base their decisions off of. We received word that we would indeed get a second chance to submit a new home study with supporting documents but had only 30 days in which to do so. VICTORY #2
We also found an agency who listened to our story and also could not believe that another agency would take the word of "anonymous people" before fully examining the facts and situation. Our new case worker at our new agency stepped right up and told us we had a battle in front of us but it was one she thought we needed and could face. She also lined up our Bulgarian agency who also was willing to fight this battle with us. VICTORY #3
For me, at this point, the greatest victory was that of the love and faith of my friends! Even though a couple trusted individuals betrayed my trust I still had the prayers of my friends. Prayer is what brought us this far and prayer would see us to the end. VICTORY #4
No comments:
Post a Comment