We Made it to Poland!

We made it to Poland last night and "passed" our first interview this morning! It was like we expected, they wanted to know why why we wanted to adopt a child with special needs, how we thought we could handle another child with extra needs when we already have one, how Anna and Levi feel about having another sibling with special needs, etc. We understand that we are the first special needs adoption here and, although their questions were hard to hear and answer, they seemed to just be genuinely curious and we did enjoy sharing our hearts with them. We were in a conference room with a HUGE table, there were seven people including the director of the national adoption center and a psychologist! After the interview, we drove South for about four and a half hours and just made it to our hotel. We have another interview at the regional adoption center in the morning and they will be the ones to notify the orphanage if we have final permission to meet Amelia. After they give us permission and notify the orphanage, we will drive to the city that she is in and then we meet her tomorrow afternoon as long as the orphanage is willing to let us come then. It's already 9pm here so probably only about 16 hours or so until we hope to meet her!!!

We found out today from the director that Amelia's legal guardian (we learned that all Polish orphans are assigned one and it's typically someone who works at the orphanage) must also consent to the adoption in court and is even allowed to add her own qualifications! Some examples that they gave us are that she can require us to come back with Anna, Levi, and Claire to make sure that they are all happy about the adoption, she can require us to prove that we can understand and speak Polish, almost anything that she feels is necessary to prove that we will be a good family for Amelia. Please continue to pray that everyone here receives us well and that we can meet all of the requirements of all of these different people so we can get our girl home!

We will update again tomorrow. Thank you for encouraging and praying for us!!!