Adoption Update

I know I have people that read my blog (although I truly have no idea why! Ha!) and I've had so many friends ask me and even a blog reader email me a couple months ago asking about our adoption. I've been hesitant to talk much about it because it is such a long process with no movement and it gets really old saying, "nothing has changed." And in all honesty, the less I think about it, the less anxious I get about the lack of movement. I have so much going on in my day to day life with raising the four we already have, that it is pretty easy to push the adoption to the back of my mind.

I know that sounds like I don't think of our son, and that's not true. It's hard to explain. It's a coping mechanism, really. We talk about our brother in Haiti with the kids. We are thinking about room rearrangement when he gets home. We pray for him. We look every day on the orphanage website for news. But I can't linger too long on those thoughts or I get anxious and frustrated and that will accomplish nothing.

Today we got some news. :) Not the BIG news we are still waiting for, our referral, but forward movement. So we'll take it! ;)

To give a litt;e background, Haiti announced in August of 2011 that they were going to ratify the Hague Convention which was going to change adoptions. We had just contacted God's Littlest Angels orphanage and had been approved adopt from their orphanage. We knew of GLA from our friends who lived in Haiti, and knew that they are an amazing place and that God was leading us to them. After a long road trying to figure out how our adoption was going to happen.

Because Haiti was going to ratify the Hague, we were told that instead of working directly with GLA, we would have to work with an accredited adoption agency in the States. GLA works with 2 American adoption agencies. One of them is Bethany Christian Services. I know people who work in the Little Rock office of Bethany, so we felt confident in choosing BCS.

That was in August of 2011. It took until October of 2012 to get everything in order for our dossier to get to Haiti. (I won't even go into all of that. It is such an exhausting an long process.) There was a magical deadline of November 1 that we were trying to beat. On November 1, the government office in Haiti that handles adoptions was shutting down and not accepting dossiers. After they reopened, the dossiers they accepted were going to be processed under the new Haitian adoption laws. Laws that no one is certain of. But we are all encouraged that these new laws will make adoption in Haiti easier.

Our biggest concern has been the fact that Haiti was going to make an announcement of all the American adoption agencies that they would work with for all new adoptions. There was a chance that our agency would not be accepted. I've had a peace that BCS would be on the list, but there was a chance that they wouldn't be and then we would be in no man's land with a completed dossier in Haiti that is obsolete. And we didn't know how much would have to be re-done. (And remember it took over a year to put it together.)

Today, after 2 postponed announcement dates, the list was announced. And BCS IS ON IT!! Praise the Lord!

So now, the next step of waiting is for our referral. There is some uncertainty on our part what has to happen before we get the referral. I think GLA will match us with a child (a boy between 4 and 7) and then the child's information and our dossier will go to the Haitian government office for approval. After it gets approved we will get our referral. That's not to say we have to accept that specific referral. That decision is definitely ours. If we feel that the child we are matched with is not the fit for our family, we can say no. Then GLA will work on another referral and send that to the government.

I do want to say, I don't think there would be a scenario in which we would reject a referral. It is always a possibility, but we have prayed over our referral and we have complete confidence in the director of GLA and her prayers over every referral she makes. We truly feel that God has directed us in every single step of this adoption process and He knew who our son was before He formed him in the womb. This is a process that has been determined for our lives and we know that we won't get "the wrong kid."

And now the waiting continues. :) I do ask 2 things. Please pray for us and that our referral will come quickly and that our son will come home this year. This has been the longest "pregnancy" ever! And second. Please pray for the families who have been working with adoption agencies that were not approved. They are now in the position of trying to find another agency and figure out what how much of their dossier has to be redone.