Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Part 1: God's Perfect Plan

God, working through members of our church, led us to Great Wall China Adoption in Austin, TX , our international adoption agency who approved our adoption application on March 26, 2007.

We began the “Paperchase” phase of our adoption which included a home study done by a social worker, birth certificates, marriage certificates, physical exams, background checks, police reports, employment letters, financial statements, reference letters, fingerprinting, passports, and the most important of all was approval from immigration to adopt an orphan.

It was easy to see from the very beginning that adoption is definitely not for the faint of heart and it was going to take a lot of faith, perseverance, and patience. We have also discovered that adoption is definitely not the easy way of being “pregnant!” For those couples, who have adoption as their only way to create a family...God bless you! There are definitely labor pains in the adoption method of family building!

Once all of the paperwork was gathered, it then had to go through a three-step process of notarization, state certification, and a final authentication by the Chinese Consulate in Chicago .

We pushed as quickly as we could to get our paperwork done and our Dossier was delivered to the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) and logged into their system on June 20, 2007.

Now, the wait truly begins and at this time our agency informs us that the approximate time to receive a non-special needs referral of an infant from China has been steadily increasing from about 9 months (2 to 3 years ago) to about 2 years right now and increasing to an unknown timeframe in the future. As of May 2007, new requirements were instituted by the CCAA to limit the number of families who can apply to hopefully decrease this referral time. Oh my goodness, how will we pass the time of the next 2-3 years????

For the answer, please read Part 2: God's Perfect Plan continues!

No comments: