Making the Change

We have officially decided to change agencies. We couldn't deal with up to a 24 month wait at CHSFS. They are a great agency and we were happy with the contact we had with them, it is simply too long to wait.
We are moving to Adoption Advocates International (AAI)out of Port Angeles, WA. AAI is also a very reputable agency that does great humanitarian work in Ethiopia and they actually require all of their families to support their efforts in Ethiopia once the adoption goes through. We have experienced a very high level of service during the initial question asking phase so we are pleased thus far.
We sent our application to them today for over night delivery. Our social worker with Catholic Charities has already spoken with them and sent them a copy of our home study. So hopefully that will mean we fly right through this application process and get on to our dossier which is what we were getting ready to start with CHSFS anyway. So we don't lose any time in the process on the front end and we will be dealing with a 6-9 month wait once we get done with the dossier.
So all is good on the Koesters front. We are ready to start the holidays. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Changing Agencies

We have decided to change agencies. Although there was a lot to like about CHSFS, they recently increased their wait times to up to 2 years for a referral. When we first inquired the average wait time was around a year. So we began to look at other agencies and realized the wait time wasn't nearly that long elsewhere.
So we started looking for a new agency that had the right accreditation along with a history in Ethiopia that includes humanitarian efforts. We have settled on Adoption Advocates International which is located in Washington state. The lead time with AAI is on average 6-9 months. This means that we could be looking at bringing our new little one home at the end of 2010 or early 2011. This is much better for us.
Stay tuned....

Wow, We Have Been Bad At This

Well we sure are bad at keeping this thing up. A lot has happened in the last several weeks since we last posted. My (Scott) employer was finally purchased by AT&T Wireless. AT&T was not able to purchase 8 territories in the SouthEast US, Louisiana and Mississippi per the Dept. of Justice. These territories have to be run as a separate company until AT&T can sell them to another company. I have accepted a position to be on the Executive Management team of this company. I will be able to stay in Fort Wayne and it will keep me employed for probably another 6 months to a year. So that is positive news for us because the economy today is not a good one to be unemployed in and we definitely don't want to think about moving from Fort Wayne due to a job change.
On the adoption front we have finally received our home study. We have sent it to our agency and are awaiting instructions to begin our dossier. The bad news is that our agency recently increased the wait time to 18-24 months. This is very discouraging. We have looked at some other agencies because the wait times seem to be less. We are discussing and praying about whether or not we should switch agencies.
Everyone else in the family is doing well. We have been battling some nagging fall colds but have avoided any of the major illnesses going around. Kyle and Faith both got straight A's and very good reports from their teachers for the first grading period. Joe and Carson are just as ornary as ever.
I'll try to do better with keeping this thing up!