March Adoption Update

China matched referrals for the dates August 22-31st which finally completes the month of August.  I CAN.NOT.BELIEVE we will begin September next month.  I am very surprised they matched 10 days which is a big number for them. I think there were some days in August where the agency was closed so no one was logged in on those days.  There are also several days in September where they have lots of families logged in, so I'm nervous those days could slow things down a bit.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are some months when they only match 2 or 3 days.  We need 19 more days to tick away, we're just not sure how long that could take.  If they kept going 10 days at a time it could be as early as May, but if they slow down to 2 or 3 days a month it could be as long as Oct. or Nov..  This is always the tricky part, wondering how much longer....it seems to be the story of our life.  I'm reading an incredible book, Adopted for Life by Russell Moore.  I highly recommend it for anyone, even if you're not adopting.  I've learned a lot about my own adoption as a child of God.  I'm hoping to start blogging a little more and share my thoughts on adoption and what it means to our family.  Please continue to pray for our little one as she's probably already born and already in a Chinese Welfare Institute.

Waiting, waiting...

If our adoption keep moving at this pace, we will not make the cutoff to travel under our I-800 paperwork.  It looks like we'll have to update to the Hague stuff which just basically means that we'll have to wait much longer to travel to China.  If we could keep the old paperwork we would be home with our daughter before we would ever even travel under the new paperwork.  There is a difference of several months which is just torture for us!  It's gotten so hard now that the light is at the end of the tunnel because we're so close, yet so far away still!  I know that once we hold her for the first time this waiting will be forgotten.  We received our  "on deck" email from our agency basically laying out the next few months for us.  We need to make sure all of our paperwork is udated, immunizations up to date and finances ready.  It could still be 6-8 more months so the term "on deck" is a little deceiving.  We know all of this is in God's timing and our daughter will be ready for us when it's time, it's just really, really hard!