THE Call....

***BTW - I love this man.

The past 3 weeks have been riddled with me on the phone, or e-mailing various people in 3 counties and 2 states. I have been dealing with 6 different people - Social Worker in Birmingham, a VERY rude ICPC worker in Montgomery, AL, CASA worker in Tiffin, OH, foster parents in Tiffin, OH, Children's Services Attorney in Tiffin, OH, and a ghost social worker in Tiffin, OH. (I only say ghost, because I have never had a conversation with her and she never, ok, she answered one of my many attempts to e-mail her.) Apparently, there is some rule where the various parties can't speak to each other, but attempt to communicate with each other through me - ridiculous I know.



We have been finished with our foster care licensing for over 2 months and no one could track our paperwork and figure out where the paperwork was and why we were being held up in our process to get baby Quinn to Alabama. When asked by our friends and family when we would get him, our response was simply "Well, hopefully before he goes to college."



I got an e-mail from our social worker here who said we had a new caseworker (our 3rd since we began this process) and she seemed to be on the ball, but still no word on where the heck our paperwork was. (When you are trying to get a child who is not in your state, paperwork has to go from a local DHR office, to the state office of the person trying to get the child, to the state's office where the child resides, and then to the local office.)



Friday afternoon I got a call from our new caseworker in Ohio. No excitement on my part, no pounding heart, not even a clue of what she was going to say. After the normal niceties, she said...."I am sitting here looking at your home study report." Again no excitement, nothing. Since I never got word that our initial study had gotten there, I said "The first one, the one we had done in November?" Nope, it was THE study. The final link to going and getting Quinn. I wasn't expecting it AT ALL!!! I was numb, excited, but numb - probably had something to do with the fact that about 2 hours later I would realize I had strep throat.



I called Billy - who was as shocked as I was. He had proclaimed on Sunday that he expected God to do great things for us this week. How cool is that?



Because different states handle things differently, they are having a meeting in OH to discuss our case tomorrow (Monday). According to OH processes and procedures, we would have been named Quinn's legal guardians and I guess that would have been the end of the story. Alabama places him as a foster child until he is adopted. So, tomorrow they are going to figure out how to proceed with everything.



We are slated to travel to Ohio on June 4, be in court on June 5, spend the weekend with him in Ohio and bring him home on Monday.



Now that everything has had a chance to sink in (and I have been on antibiotics since Friday evening), we are beyond excited. Thank you for continuing to pray for us and him, and walking this journey with us.

For this child I prayed; and the LORD hath given me my petition which I asked of him: 1Samuel 1:27 ...