The Setliffe Family

Back Pain, Home Study & My Mama

Hey friends! I hope you've had a good Sunday. I had to stay home from church this morning b/c I somehow managed to throw my back out this week & I am pretty much couch bound. Not fun! But I am managing & thankfully Ava has been good for me. I also wanted to keep Ava out of the nursery this week since it is a breeding ground for germs. We're headed to Florida on Friday to spend 2 weeks with my family while Matt is in China. Since my Mom is in chemo, her immune system is very weak & I didn't want to bring any extra germs with us. So, we had a quiet morning at home. Please pray that my back starts healing....we have so much to do by tomorrow night before our social worker comes.

Tomorrow we have our last meeting with our social worker, Beth. We have our in-home visit where she tours our home, does our final couple interview & observes how we interact with Ava in her own environment. We are SO happy that our homestudy is wrapping up. It's definitely the most labor intensive part of our entire adoption process. We were really wanting to have our final meeting before we both took off for the rest of the month, so we're really happy that it all worked out. The US Center for Immigration Services (USCIS) is increasing their fees on July 31, so we really wanted to have our homestudy complete by then so we don't have to pay the extra (large) charge. Praise God....it looks like it will happen! The only bad thing by finishing early is that we now need our fee ASAP. Pray that God provides the last $300 that we need for this portion of our paperwork! Thanks for praying!! When we get back in August, we will just have to meet with our psychologist for IQ, personality & general testing and then gather a few more documents & our entire dossier will be COMPLETE!! We're hoping to have everything done & sent by early September. Please pray with us as we work diligently to complete this goal. Once our homestudy is complete we can start applying for grants & loans (hallelujah!!). To submit our dossier we will need another $5,500, so we are really hoping to be accepted by some grant organizations. After everything is turned in we will have about a year to wait for the referral of our daughter & then we will travel to get her about a month after that. SO.....hopefully she will be home by next fall.....YEAH!!! Thanks for praying through all of these things with us!

Finally, an update on my Mom. She is halfway done with her chemo treatments now. She has the week off and begins her 4th round next Friday. She had a CT Scan done this week to see the progress of the chemo. We should have the results from that by Friday. Please be praying for this.....we really need some good news right now. Pray that the chemo is doing its work & that she is on the road to being cancer free. She has about 2 good days per chemo round & the rest of the time she feels completely terrible. Her main pain is in her stomach....it's very tight, crampy & uncomfortable. She is also not sleeping very well. Please be praying for her as she begins round #4 this weekend. Thanks for your prayers. I can't wait to see my family & to spend some special time with my Mom.

Oops...one more thing :) Our family coordinator with AWAA traveled to El Salvador last week to work in-country to get some things moving within our program. The first referrals should be handed out soon to the 1st families...very exciting! El Salvador is trying to get some of the older & special needs kids adopted out first before they move on to the infants & toddlers. Here are some pictures she took of some kids that are adoptable. They are so beautiful. I thought I'd put the pictures on my blog....you never know who might see one of these kids & decide to pursue their adoption. Plus you get to see how incredible beautiful the El Salvadorian people are! Love you all! If you or anyone you know is even slightly interested in any of these kids, click here to find out how to contact AWAA.