Several people have asked me lately about where things stand for us in the adoption process. I will try to give the simple facts here. The Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA), the governmental office in China that handles all of their adoptions, has had our paperwork logged into their system for 17 months as of next week. Everyday, basically, they log in more families who have sent them a big packet of information called a dossier. At one point a while ago (and in a perfect working office), they would process 30 days of dossiers each month. This means that when they would issue referrals (baby pictures and medical information assigned to a waiting family) once a month, they would issue enough to cover a month’s worth of waiting families. However, that has not been the case for a long time. In the entire 17 months of our waiting, the CCAA has only processed about 3 months of paperwork. Yes, that means that in 17 months, only 3 months worth of families have actually received referrals for their children. Obviously, this slowdown has caused a huge backlog of waiting families. No one knows when the CCAA will start speeding up and what this means for waiting families. Many waiting parents are dropping out of the program entirely or pursuing a concurrent adoption while they wait. We are committed to sticking with the program and still very much feel called to our little girl. But, we have no idea when she will actually come home. All we know right now is that the process will be a long one. Very likely, we will have one or two more Christmases without her–and that’s a good case scenario. Besides the long indefinite wait being a hard one for us, it is hard for our children who were prepared to bring their new sister home the day we started our paperwork process back in March of 2007. Pray that we would be patient with the process, knowing that God will make us wait the perfect amount of time for OUR little girl to join our family. And, please pray for the CCAA to pick up their pace not only for our process but for the children who are in orphanages there who are not being placed in their forever families because of politics or logistics or whatever. It breaks my heart to imagine babies over there laying in cribs alone when there are so so many mommies and daddies wanting so badly to bring them home.
Philly Area mom, Life forever changed by adoption
I couldn’t have explained it better…it’s so hard to explain to people. And even after I do…they still don’t understand. I need to book mark this page and use it as a script when explaining.
You’re so good. I pray for you, but like you said especially your children–that God grant them peace and understanding of the wait. Surely they will learn the lesson and reward of patience. A lesson they will never forget! Once you have Lydia home with you, there will be no doubt that patience is a virtue and one that is rewarded richly!
We’re with you on this journey. Like you-we were sure of our committment to the China NSN program. But God has thrown us for a loop lately–and we’re trying to find our way back to the beautiful blissful peaceful waiting place we were at earlier. I always appreciated, where you are–and where we were with the wait. Of course we wanted it to happen as soon as possible, but we were granted amazing peace in this wait–sure that we were exactly where God planned for us–and there was huge comfort in that. So..my friend…I am so happy for you, and I know Lydia will be with you in HIS perfect time. Absolutely! God is soooo Good!
Kelly~Do you really think maybe it will only be one & maybe two more Christmas’s for us? I can’t even remember now exactly, but the stats that if they continue like they are now or worse yet slow down that for us it would be something like a total of five or six years. I so hope that is not true. Maybe they will speed up, huh? Here’s hoping for great things to come in the upcoming year!