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!!