Police Clearance Letters

A normal part of the homestudy process is to get police clearance letters. When we sat down with our social worker to discuss the infinite paperwork list, this was one of the items. She gave a brief description of what it entailed..and basically it sounded something like this, "All you have to do is go to the local police department and ask them for a letter of clearance". This sounded incredibly easy and so a couple of weeks ago while I was out and about, I dropped by our local police department and 'asked for a letter'. To my surprise, this process was a little more complicated than just the asking. First of all, I had gone to the city police and not the county sherriffs department. Since we live outside the city limits, we are supposed to use the county dept. I did not know this, of course... AND, I did not bring Chris, which is apparently a no-no. They will not submit letters unless you are TOGETHER. So, it took a week and half before we could go to the sherriff's dept because of our crazy busy schedules. Then, instead of simply telling them our names and addresses, we had to fill out a form with more info and describe in detail what exactly we wanted this letter to say. The lady was pretty adamant about this. We found out that we dont go home with this letter that day. Instead, it will take a few days to a week. This was again another shocker. I was glad we had not waited until the last minute to do this. In closing...our letters are supposed to be ready by Monday. Yippee! We can hopefully check this one off the list!