Adoption Update

We received an update from our adoption agency this morning. No, we haven't received our referral. :-( More on that in just a minute. It has been 8 weeks since we received our pre-approval from China to adopt a now 16 month old baby girl. The China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has just started using a new computer system which is supposed to "speed" the process along. Our adoption agency expected us to receive our official "Seeking Confirmation Letter (SCL)" OR "Referral" from China within 6-8 weeks from the date of our pre-approval, which was March 12, 2008. Every night for the past month we have gone to bed hoping to be awakened with a phone call from our agency. Every morning we wake up with the realization that "THE" phone call did not happen. How frustrating!!!

Well, last night Scott emailed our agency in St. Louis to see if they had any news for us. They promptly replied to our email with the information that there is nothing we can do but wait for the CCAA to review our dossier (the tremendous pile of documents that took us 6 months to accumulate, have notarized, certified, and authenticated that tells our complete life stories). Apparently, because our Log In Date (LID), the date the CCAA logged us into their system, is Oct. 26, 2007, there are other families like us who have chosen a Waiting Child but their LID is earlier than ours and they are receiving their SCL's before us.

What that all means is that our agency thinks we will have to wait another 1-2 MONTHS before we receive our referral. I guess we can count on getting a few more full nights of sleep between now and then. Our best estimate now as to when we think we will be traveling is September or October. Sighhhhhh.

As always, we promise to update you all whenever we hear something! Let's hope it's sooner rather than later!

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mothers out there!

More Good News...pray it continues!

We received even better news this past week regarding our baby. Our agency notified us that the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has approved our care plan and moved our application further along in the process. We've met with our social worker who is currently writing our home study addendum. The baby is currently 14 1/2 months old and is living with foster family. We hope to be traveling to get her sometime this summer, hopefully before the Olympics kick off in Beijing. March 21st marks our 1 year anniversary of our start of the adoption paper chase. It really is hard to believe it has really been a year already. We are all excited and can't wait to get the referral for her, which will mean pictures that we can post. Please continue to pray for the babies health and that the Lord will remove barriers and provide financially for this adoption. 

We miss you all from the beautiful island of Guam!