An adoption update

It has been hard to provide adoption updates for the blog for two reasons - one is that we haven't had any or much news to share and two any news we have hasn't been hopeful. I've been so depressed and discouraged especially after our adoption agency had a call with all families currently planning adoption from Vietnam. Her words were not optimistic and she suggested that all of us consider other places from which to adopt including Russia and China. We already have our dossier in China and expect that to go through in two to three years. Our agency director promised to get back to each one of us to let us know where our dossier is in the Vietnam process and to let us know where we were in the agency queue. Currently 20 families have their dossiers in VN awaiting a child. We finally got the news of our status today.

Last time we checked (about two months ago) our dossier was at the Ministry of Justice and it is now at the Thu Doc Youth Village orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon). There are four families from our agency ahead of us in line for children. Although this sounds positive, keep in mind that other agencies from all over the world also work with this same orphanage, and we don't know how many folks are waiting from these other agencies. Supposedly, two of the families waiting from our agency should receive their referrals soon and then we would be third in line.

The problem is this: the agreement for adoptions between VN and the United States expires on September 1st. We don't know if VN will be shut down completely or if they will continue to process adoptions already begun or with referrals or with paperwork at a certain place in the queue. It is our hope, obviously, that we will receive our referral prior to September 1st or if we haven't that they will still process our adoption since our dossier is already at the orphanage.

So think good thoughts for us and send us your prayers. Hopefully this will all work out and we'll receive our little guy soon.