Lately...

We have had a wonderful holiday season with family and friends. It has really started feeling "real" to me this month. The fact that my heart is growing outside of our amazing family of 5...and there is an emptiness that now fills my mind when I think about not having our sweet addition with us during these holidays. I love to think that next year we will be a family of 6...and we will be able to show our new child what Christmas really means and what family is all about.

I have been spending more time than I would like "making my list and checking it twice." I am happy to say that we have jumped through all the hoops and collected all of our paper trails and medicals to turn in for our last home study interview on January 11th!

We have done a TON of post adoption reading and training that will hopefully aid in our adjustment once we get back home from China with our new child. We've read books, articles, and taken a 10-hr course online. We will travel to a international Crossings seminar closer to our travel date and spend a weekend learning even more. There is a lot of attachment, bonding, and emotional (and physical) affects that families who adopt will experience. We know that our family and friends will be patient with us when this day finally gets here and we walk down that new path. Lifeline does an awesome job raising awareness of problems and issues that may arise in the future- instead of letting us be surprised when they develop later on.

I had my passport renewed! So much fun to see that I am getting closer and closer to being ready to travel.

Many of our social workers have taken time off for Christmas and the New Year- but next week I expect the ball will start rolling quickly again. 

Guess what arrived on our doorstep Christmas Eve?? The tshirts!! We will be mailing these out next week and can't wait to get a picture of you in them. I absolutely love the shirts and it brings a smile to my face each time I think of our "heart" being advertised all around the states!  It is not to late to get one- we ordered some extras, so let me know if you still need one.

And finally... many have asked about a donation fund or website in which money can be contributed to our particular adoption ministry. We will be setting up a tax deductible giving site once our home study is approved. This is protocol to wait until that time so that it is a 100% sure thing that our adoption is happening! We look forward to sharing that with you very soon. Thank you for those who have asked about doing your part, financially, in helping orphans. 

Independent Home Study Interviews and the next step....

Last Friday I had my one on one interview with our social worker and today Brad is having his! One step closer, one check mark on the to-do list. Those lengthy (12  page) autobiographies were tough. We had a great interview and discussed our families of origin, marital relationships, and common issues that might arise once we get home with our child. It was great to hear her wisdom on some issues that we hadn't considered. We finished the meeting and went over the remaining items on our home study check lists and made plans to meet up after Christmas for our final joint interview. We will be getting our physicals, doctors notes, employment documents, etc. ready these next couple weeks.  We also have several education requirements to complete during this time. We are reading the book The Connected Child by Karyn Purvis- I would recommend this reading to all parents- adoptive or not! It really helps having a hard copy of easy to follow, easy reminders to keep visible when difficult situations may arise with our children. We also have to complete Hague training, US Department information, Unadopted program, and some other education reading. We are hoping our HS is completed by the middle or end of January...but if you are wondering what is keeping us busy during this month...now you know!

Once our interviews are complete, all of our documents and education complete, our social worker will write up and lengthy document that will be finalized. At that point- the process gets a bit more difficult to understand to the average lay person...me included! I have to pull out my manual, meeting notes, and abbreviation cheat sheets each time I look at this process. Slowly, it is beginning to make sense to us!

-Along with our home study, we will file an application called an  I 800 A- with the CIS in order to be approved to adopt internationally. The USCIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) is the department within homeland security that is responsible for issuing approvals and permits to families to bring their adopted child into the U.S. from their country of origin.
-Approval from Immigration can take approximately 2-3 months to receive.
- While we are waiting for this approval, we will be finalizing, certifying and authenticating all of our documents into a large collection of 13 documents- called a Dossier (pronounced doss-ee-ay).
-Once we receive our approval we will mail all of this (our dossier) to the CCWA (The Chinese Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption) which is located in Beijing, China.
-DTC- Dossier To China! This is a big milestone!

So our next steps will lead us to China!! Taking baby steps...but very exciting, with a lot of waiting.

Prayer requests: Pray that we can accomplish all we need to by the end of January to get this ball rolling! Finishing the home study will be a load off  and freeing to know we are moving on into the next phase.

We received our first little gifts for our little love this weekend!! Envisioning having our new addition next Christmas makes my heart jump for joy!!

Letter to Family and Friends

We are excited to announce that we are pursuing ADOPTION!  We will be adopting from China,  and we hope to have a little boy or a little girl in our arms in late 2016 or early 2017.   

Why would we choose to adopt?  There are over 147 MILLION orphans in our world.  That is 147 million children who do not know the love of a mommy and a daddy.  Although adopting one child does not put a dent into the orphan problem in the world, there will be one less child who does not know about love and home and family.  God speaks of adoption and his love for the orphan throughout the Bible.  He even states that we are “adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:5).  He also directs us to care for the orphans and widows (James 1:27).  Though there are many ways to care for the orphans and widows, our family has been led to pursue adoption. Over the last two years, we have earnestly prayed and sought God’s will about foster and orphan care, and we believe that now is the time for our family to adopt.  We are excited to see God work in the life of our family as we work towards adding a son or daughter, a brother or sister, to our family.

 

There are many ways that you can be a part of an adoption ministry- even ours specifically if you feel led! We feel honored to be able to speak up for those who have no voice and to raise orphan awareness in our circles of family and friends.  First, we ask that you pray for us.  Pray for our son or daughter that is waiting on a forever family.  Pray for God to remove all roadblocks from our process.  Pray that we will raise all of the funds needed to complete the adoption and travel to China to rescue our newest little family member.  Although the cost is high, we believe that God will provide us with the means to adopt.  If you feel led to donate or help with a fundraiser in some way we would greatly appreciate it and we will be grateful for even the smallest donations to assist with our adoption expenses.  We have some excellent fundraisers planned and hope to give you some easy opportunities to have a chance to be the hands and feet that spread love to orphans around the world.

 We want each of you to be a part of this important, exciting time in our lives.  Please follow our family blog at www.bringinghobbshome.blogspot.com to keep up with our journey.  We will be updating it regularly, as well as updating Facebook and Instagram as much as we can.  If you would like to know more about the adoption process or our decision to adopt, please feel free to email us at tess266@hotmail.com or give us a call! We would love sharing about the exciting changes that God is doing in our hearts and family.

 

Above all, we thank you for your prayers and support!  This process is complicated and extensive, but it will be completely worth it when we are holding a precious child that God has given to us to love.  We are so thankful for many friends and family that love our family.  We look forward to updating you as we continue to grow our family into a party of 6!

Love, 

The Hobbs Family

Brad, Tessa, Caroline, Emily and Hannah

Watch our video!

Turn up your volume and then check out our new video announcement the girls have helped me make this week.

The T-shirts are ready!!

Hobbs Adoption T-Shirt Sale!

Help us spread the word and help educate others about orphan ministry. We would love for you to be a part of our story- and here is a great, easy way to do that! Buy shirts for family and friends- then send us a picture of you wearing the shirt and tag us and #fundthenations (Fund the Nations is our Tshirt design company). When you wear the shirt- remember us and our journey- as well as those orphans without a voice that you are advocating for!

Shirt Design #1

"147 Million Orphans- minus ONE"

Green, Red, Blue Ragland Baseball T-Shirts:

Suggested donation of $20
S-M-L-XL
2X-3X (+$2)



**TShirt Design #2**
"How do you reach 147 million?" 

Suggested donation of $20
S-M-L-XL
2X-3X (+$2)

Children's sizes available!

xs-s-m-l

Please call, text, Facebook, Instagram, email or leave a comment if you would like to order a t-shirt. Include design, sizes, colors, quantity and mailing address. Help us spread the word by sharing this link with friends on social media!

tess266@hotmail.com     

Sizing- these shirts are the soft, comfy kind! Because of this they may "cling more" and so it is recommended to order a size up.

Home Study #1

Today our social worker arrived at 9:30 am to have our first joint interview, home tour, and child observation. It went really well!! Just like everyone says- I worried way more than I should have beforehand. We really enjoyed talking and getting to know Sella throughout our interview conversations. She walked us through some documents, a list of to-do's and then jumped into our question and answer session. The girls played well while we spoke for over and hour and a half. Most of the topics we covered today addressed relationships we have within our marriage, extended family, etc. Brad and I took a prepare and enrich marriage survey online beforehand and we looked at our results. We also discussed how we ended up in the adoption process and where our hearts are in this whole process. We discussed travel, building a "cocoon" around our nuclear family of 6 when we return from China, and teaching our new son or daughter what family is. The girls were dying for Sella to interview them, so she asked them a few questions about how they felt about the adoption and what they expect life to be like with a new sibling. After that the girls took Sella on a home tour- no closets thankfully!- and then we were done! So thankful that Brad had this morning with no surgeries scheduled and we were able to knock this long interview off the list.Our list is a mile long of things to accomplish, but we are trucking along! Next up is writing our autobiographies. This will be a long, tedious process, but well worth it hopefully. We will meet individually with Sella once we have completed those. So happy to be done with that interview and moving forward. Our social worker mentioned that usually travel happens about 1 year from home study...so that means that next Thanksgiving/Christmas we may be traveling to bring Hobbs baby #4 home!!

Phone Call and Orientation Interview

On Tuesday, 11/24 , Brad and I had a conference call with our China social worker. Her name is Emily and we spoke for over an hour about our family, the adoption process and so much more. It was nerve wracking to finally begin the homestudy process...but also so exciting at the same time!
We were able to ask more in depth questions about the process, and begin to plan the next stage of our journey. I had this conversation in the van...all was quiet and the girls were in their CC classes. Perfect timing, no? Otherwise I wasn't quite sure how me occupied for an hour on the phone was going to play out!!

Our homestudy worker is named Sella. She emailed us the next day about what we can expect during the upcoming 4 visits from her. There is A LOT involved, but it seems like she will keep us on the ball and moving at a good pace to have our study completed in 10-12 weeks. We will have 3 joint interviews, 1 individual interview, a home tour, observation of our bio children, many educational homework assignments, and a lot of planning for life post adoption. I am excited about gaining wisdom and guidance from this process. After discussing the homestudy portion she went through in detail about how the China process works. The more familiar we become with hearing the terms, initials, and acronyms the better it all feels. After she answered our questions- she asked us each individualized personal questions. It was a long conversation...but it left me more and more excited and assured about our journey. We look forward to nailing down our first visit this coming week.

On anther note- we have started a t-shirt design process with a company. I am very excited and cannot wait to announce our t shirt designs and start our presales! Just the ability to spread orphan awareness through something as simple as wearing a t shirt makes my heart happy. Hoping to have those details figured out this week also.

Our Story Continues...

**God is amazing. Before any other words are written to document this story- those words have to be heard. Brad and I are continually amazed and in awe at how our heavenly father speaks to our hearts, puts us in situations, and confirms His heart in our own. His timing, His plan, His heart. These are all things we have some knowledge on in our faith walk the past 34 years of our lives...but what blows us away is that our story isn't over. God is looking the world over for willing hearts to share His vision and love for the entire world. Our story, our world, and our imagined future are about to be changed. We are more than thankful to allow God another opportunity in our stories to show us His faithfulness, His goodness, and His ultimate plan for our lives here on earth. Our time here is short- but we want to make a powerful impact during it. We are thankful that God's word, the Bible, has given us a tried and true, sure fire way to make our time here on earth count.**

All of that to preface our announcement that .....God has placed the calling of adoption on our hearts and into our family story! We have walked around, talked about, and prayed about adoption for a few years now. I will attempt to lay out the process of how we have gotten to this very exciting moment in time.

Brad and I were blessed with three precious biological daughters back to back to back. We prayerfully made the decision for our family to take a rest after our third child, and I had a tubal ligation after my c-section with Hannah. We have always said we did not foresee us having any more children biologically- but would always leave the door open to adopt one day down the road.

And here we are down the road. 4 years later- to the date to be exact- October 25, 2015 and Brad and I start the discussion of seriously pursuing adoption. But of course there is some backstory. As a mother- I feel like my heart was always softened to the idea of adoption from the simple understanding of a mother-child relationship. It broke my heart to think of precious souls out there with no one to love and nurture them. Through out the past 4 years God has lead us to watch and befriend several close families as they have gone through the adoption process- domestic and international. We have listened and gotten familiar with a lot of foster and adoptive circles and always felt brokenhearted each November when Orphan Awareness hit the front lines of our church.

 About one year ago I brought up the notion to Brad and we seriously prayed about if it was the right time and the right move for our family to start the adoption process. My very best friend Melissa and I would talk DAILY about how heavy the burden was on our hearts to just do SOMETHING to help. Was it to foster? Adopt? Volunteer? We both started reading, meeting with informed people, and just really searching for ways to get involved and educated on this matter. As a couple, Brad and I would pray each night before bed asking for both Brad and my heart to be lead in the same direction, with the same peace to move forward. Brad wasn't feeling the same peace and excitement that I had at the time. He was open to praying and thinking on it- but didn't feel lead to adopt at that point in time.

God answered our prayer in a very real way last spring by bringing our family into a trial that wouldn't allow for much added excitement to our family. Brad was diagnosed with cancer in March of  2015 and all of our focus turned to treating him and getting his health back to normal. Praise the Lord we walked through that chapter of our life and God has healed Brad's body and he is cancer free since May 2015. We endured a surgical operation, and then one round of chemotherapy for Brad. Our prayers and our focus shifted to total dependence on God for healing during this time.


God spoke clearly to my heart about adoption. I knew I didn't "need" more children in our family. I am not feeling "incomplete" or "unfinished". My heart is truly broken for these real life souls who are sitting in orphanages...with no one to show them the hope of Jesus. Being willing, and amply available to be agents of change in a persons life..I kept hearing the phrase "if only ONE person is impacted for eternity with Jesus, then your purpose is played out." I felt confident that we were being called to impact ONE more little life in our family.

Every now and then I would be revisited by the thoughts of adoption, but decided that I wouldn't bring up the thoughts or even talk seriously (for fear of pushing it on him) about adoption until I heard the words from Brads lips. I knew God had been working in my heart and I felt confident, but I wanted to see God work and believed that he would change Brads heart if it was meant to really happen. Sometimes waiting is hard- but seeing the amazing hand of God work in your own life is worth the wait.

When we moved a year and a half ago, I started praying that God would direct me in finding my "niche" or my mission field. Would it be youth work? Work with women? Or simply focus on my own family as we homeschool this year and grow as a family. In Little Rock I was able to pour into the medical spouses that I encouraged through our Side by Side Bible study. But here, now,  I wasn't getting any answers. I was frustrated. Here I was asking God to confirm a calling for my life, heart, time, energy, and He was staying silent. I began to believe that God must be wanting me to simply stay put and focus on my immediate ministry of my girls and our family right now. I began to feel a heavy burden for mission work. We started praying for missions opportunities for Brad and I both to venture into. I have had a strong love for missions and my soul has a sort of "international" brand on it- from my childhood years spent overseas in Korea. God places things in your heart that are meant to stir up a passion and action in each and every one of us. Discovering what breaks your heart is the ticket to finding where God wants to use you.

God answered my prayer in His timing on Hannah's 4th birthday- October 25, 2015.  Brad and I are sitting around the dinner table talking as the girls played around us. He started talking about how he missed having a little one around and how sweet they used to be. And continued...what if we had one? Not biologically of course,..but adopted one. I listened, and then continued in conversation for a little about it. That evening we talked again and I told him about how I had been allowing God to lead and was patiently waiting for his heart to bring the idea up again. We talked and prayed some more and this time...Brads heart felt differently. This time he felt like we were ready to take some steps. As we talked and prayed about it the next 2 days God was molding our hearts together- isn't it amazing how God does that? Brad was asking me some FAQ about adoption and so I simply googled one of the agencies that I had heard about from some friends, and as Brad said the words "I wish there was a formal informational meeting we could go to" I clicked on a sidebar that listed this agencies next meeting. It was the next day,October 26. It JUST so happened to be in HUNTSVILLE. And it JUST so happened that we didn't have any plans on our calendar for that evening.  No, it did not JUST happen- we give God credit when He shows up in cool situations like that. So we rsvp YES to the informational meeting the following day. Also- it JUST so happened that my friend could come keep the girls in order for us to attend this meeting.

And so we went. We heard about Lifeline's heart for adoption and both felt drawn to their underlying passion of showing orphans foster children, birth moms, and families the gospel love of Jesus. Brad and I left the meeting and felt on the same page about pursuing International Adoption.We both believed that there is NO greater visual of Gods love for us- His adoption of us into His own family. Someone who didn't deserve it, someone without hope, someone who was alone and in need of saving. Brad and I were very excited and somewhat overwhelmed by the idea of stepping out in obedience, and faith! But we were ready.

 One of the most important decisions we had to make on our first application was which country we would adopt from. After praying, and researching and asking a lot of questions, we chose China. All things Asia are special to me- but that isn't the main reasoning behind choosing China.

Things we had to consider when discovering where and which country we could adopt from internationally:
-The Lifeline agency we chose works with 16 different countries
-The travel time spent in country when adopting varies from 5 days to 3 months.
-The age of children that can be adopted from 12 months to 16.
-The time period it can take in order to bring a child home from 11 months to 3 plus years.
-The relationship and rapport that Lifeline has with the officials in the countries.

Here is what we discovered about China and why we ended up choosing China.
-Lifeline has the longest relationship with adoptions in China- they have professional relationships with many organizations and government agencies that expedite and almost always turn out to be problem free adoptions. The positive relationship and ease that China has with the agency is a huge plus.
-The travel time required by China is only 5-10 days. This works within the limits of Brads vacation time and would be possible for us to do as a family of 5.
-Children can be as young as 12 months when adopted. We feel that keeping the birth order in our family is important to us and we would want to bring in a child as young as possible.
-On average- the time from application to bringing home a child from China is around 12 to 24 months. We were not keen on the idea of finding our child, and then having to support him/her for years before having them in our home. IF our child is 12 months plus upon adopting...then our sweet little blessing could already be born.

And so our timeline began...

November 2, 2015 Applied to be accepted into the Lifeline International Adoption program for China

November 11, 2015 Accepted into the adoption program! Welcome phone calls, information emailed to us, social worker and home study case worker assigned to our family.

November 12-13 Announced our news of adoption to our family members

November 13, 2015 Mailed off our first paperwork/Starter Kit to our social worker

To be continued...

Please begin to pray for our family. We have a long road ahead of us but couldn't be more hopeful for bringing home our 6th family member. The girls are thrilled and elated that they will be getting a new sibling..male or female is yet to be determined!! Pray for peace, affirmation in decisions, and a heart full of faith throughout our adoption.