An update, of sorts

I wish I had some great news to share, but I don't. We did meet with our agency this week and learned of some new regulations that China has implemented. So, as not to bore you with details, we had to make the decision to close our adoption, or transfer to another agency, and we chose to change agencies. It's not really that big of a deal, accept that we LOVE our agency. We chose them because they were small and they take care of every aspect of the adoption. They basically call us and tell us when things need to be updated, they send us the paperwork to sign and we just do what we are told. We completely trust them. We will still use the same social worker, but as far as all the other paperwork and the actual trip (whenever it happens), that will all change. So, that's the update, sorry it is not more exciting.

The grim part of this whole process has been the ever growing wait. The news does not seem to be getting any better. Just to put it in perspective, if the referrals continue to come at the rate that they are right now we will get our referral in January 2016. Yes, you read that right, 2016! It is hard to be excited about something like that. Now, things could speed up, but they could also slow down, but it seems hard to believe that it could be slower. There is no apparent reason for the slow down, China is a communist country, they do not have to explain anything to anyone.

With the way that paperwork and government fees go we are in the process of updating our immigration papers (the papers that allow us to adopt a foreign child), we have to keep these current, and they expire every 18 months. Again, kinda boring, but they will be renewed in December and then will be good for 18 months, we will get a free renewal at that time (kinda weird, but you only pay for every other one) and then they are good for another 18 months. Essentially, once we do this update we know we are in for another three years. At that point, the end of 2012, we will need to decide if we are ready to do it all again. Our options are to drop out of the China adoption program altogether and count our losses (both monetary and emotional), or we can switch to the special needs program, or we can just wait it out. We have no way of knowing what we will do.

So we wait, just like we have been doing. We still believe we are doing what the Lord has called us to do, which is adopt a little girl from China. We had no idea that we would be waiting this long for her, and as hard as it is to wait, we are still confident that we are doing what is best for our family. We praise the Lord for giving us a daughter to love while we wait, and can't wait to see if He has any other children who will join our family! :)