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. 

What an amazing song as we wait for our baby girl. Join us in praying for her birth family as they prepare to make potentially the hardest decision of their lives…to give up their little girl.