Adoption Update

Just wanted to give you all an update on what's happening pertaining to our adoption process:

We have been hearing for quite some time now about how our agency has many babies in care just waiting for their paperwork to be completed. They even took in quite a few toddlers a while back but it seems like not very many referrals have been given out since all these babies have arrived. Actually it seems like there haven't been many referrals at all in the last month or so. One of the waiting families wrote to our agency trying to get some information and this is what they were told:

"An issue that we have now is that the Laboratory which we use is out of the substance they use for testing for HIV DNA and for Hep B. They don't know when they will have more, but it could be several weeks. The babies have all tested negative for HIV antibodies but we haven't decided whether to offer these babies to families who are willing to take the risk of accepting a referral and then finding out later that their baby ended up testing positive for HIV or Hep B". (If that was to happen, these families would be left to have to decide whether or not they can still accept their referral. That would be difficult for families because by the time they would get the new test results they would have already become attached to their baby)

We have also found out just recently that we are approximately #10 on the waiting list! There are 9 families ahead of us waiting for various ages of girls up to about 4 years old. There are 3 families in December, 3 in January, 3 in February, and only us in March! Right now the referrals are going to families whose dossiers went to Ethiopia last December. We were told not to expect a referral before February.

But we do have some other news.......

We were approached by our agency about an Ethiopian girl that is approximately 13 who is here in the U.S. and because of certain circumstances is needing a new family. We spent the month of November praying, researching, and discussing about the possibility of us adding this sweet girl to our family. We really believe that this is God's plan for our family and that "H" was meant to be here with us. God has opened all the doors for this to happen even when I was trying my hardest to shut them. I really wanted to make sure that this was indeed coming straight from God and wanted to make sure that we were the right family for "H", the family that God wanted for her. Paperwork is being handled right now and we are praying for the date of December 14th for it all to be settled. We would absolutely love to be able to travel to get her before Christmas! So if this timing is in God's plan, we will travel to Kansas to spend some time with her and her family before loading up her things and bringing her home! We are all so excited!