Nope, not lately. Guess you could say we've hit a blogging slump in the last couple weeks.
A few weeks ago we got a call from our social worker at AAI. She was basically calling to check in on us (as she does monthly) to see how we're coping with the wait and to also "share some information" about the wait with us. Somehow we knew that "sharing information" wasn't going to be anything great. Turns out it really wasn't anything we hadn't already heard from the
RQ website, but somehow it took the wind out of our sail a little more to hear it from our social worker.
Ming, the China coordinator for AAI was in China and was able to have a 3 hour conversation with the director of the CCAA. Here are some of the highlights (lowlights) from that conversation: there is currently a backlog of 30,000 dossiers in China; the wait will for sure climb to 3 years; they hope to get through Dec. '05 LIDs by this Dec. (so the wait will probably be up to 2 years by Dec); the number of dossiers received in 2006 appears to be less than in 2005; the CCAA is only receiving 500-800 child files a month from orphanages. That may sound like a lot, but not when compared to the huge numbers of waiting children. So, obviously this relatively low number of children being referred is not due to a lack of children, but due to a lack of orphanage directors wanting to prepare paperwork for all the children that wait (we've gone over this in the past).
Most of this was not new news, it was just the first time we'd heard it all at one time, from one source. What does this mean for us?? Well, we've almost been waiting 12 months and we are trying to hold out hope that we might somehow travel by the end of next year...not sure if that'll happen, not at this rate.
Our social worker talked to us about some of the different tracks other families in our agency are taking. I guess some families are just pulling out of the program altogether, some are doing a concurrent adoption (in another country), some are switching to the special needs program, and others (like us) just continue to wait.
It's hard for us to know what we should do. I guess you could say we might be at a point of no return as far as a change of plans. We know in our hearts that we have a daughter in China, and we have every intention of sticking it out until she's home. But things have now come to a sloth-like crawl, and it's hard to think about waiting another 2+ years before we have our first child in our arms. So what do we do, if anything, in the meantime?
In case you were wondering, we have considered a concurrent adoption. Our hesitation is that we're far enough into our current adoption that there are certain things we have to keep in mind... "Rules" about the age difference of the children, and the relative length of time in the home, etc. What if we start another adoption and there's a speed up in China? What if we hit a snag in the other country? To add to that concern are the conflicting stories we keep hearing about whether or not China would even allow a concurrent adoption. Of course, there are also things you have to consider financially. Any of these factors could put things in jeopardy, and we're not sure if we're willing to risk things not working out. We have too much invested emotionally.
We knew going into this that the world of international adoption could be volatile. We were willing to accept that. Now we're getting a pretty heavy dose of that reality, as all who wait on China face unprecedented developments and delays. China, the country once known for it's stability in the adoption process, is becoming somewhat of a black hole for waiting children and families.
We say all that to say this... We try to stay up, but our red thread is stretching beyond what we thought possible. It's very disheartening at times. Lately, there hasn't been much to feel encouraged about with respect to the adoption. But we try to stay positive, take it day by day, and along the way look for guidance.
We continue to pray that something will change and the process will somehow speed up, we pray for all the waiting children and all the waiting families.
Love,
Greg and Laura
We've officially been logged in for fourteen months today! Hard to believe that last year we thought we'd be traveling right now and would have Anna home by Christmas...now we're more realistically looking at traveling sometime in 2009 (yes, 2009, not 2008). Unless, by some miracle, things start really speeding up. This month the CCAA referred a whopping 8 days worth of LIDs, which means the wait is now approximately 23 months.
And 4 - Hope you all have a great week! ;-)
