Nepal Adoption Blogs

I've added links to the left of 3 families who are adopting from Nepal, and two of them are in Nepal now! It is so exciting to be able to follow their journeys and see a glimpse of what it may be like for us. I say "may" because these are the first few families to travel so things may change once we travel. If I can be so picky two of the changes I'm hoping for-- that we have more than 3 days' notice to travel, and that we have an identified return date. But I'm not going to be picky-- if these families can get ready in 3 days for an indefinite trip, we can too. If I can remember clearly, I was completely useless in the 2 weeks before we left for China, so we may as well leave in 3 days.

One thing that I've learned on the travel blogs that Nepal does differently than China is that you visit your child in the orphanage for a few days before you take him with you to the hotel. That is so much better for attachment, and far less traumatic. I'm sure it will be very difficult to leave the little fella at the orphanage once we've met him, but knowing it will help his transition to us will help us walk out that door.

The other blog in my Nepal Adoption List is my friend Tonya's, who I am SO glad to have met. My friend Amy, told me about Tonya when she found out we were adopting from Nepal. Tonya and her family were in China adopting their daughter Noelle just 2 months before we were there, and they also used America World. They have a cool story about how they came to choose Nepal for their next adoption, so go check it out on their blog.

Anyway, they live in Maine so we haven't actually met, but we've talked on the phone a couple of times and guess what-- although they were with a different agency at first, they are now using our same agency, so there is a chance that we may travel together to get our boys since we're pretty much on the same timeline with our dossiers. How cool would that be? I never even thought to pray for a Nepal friend, and God gave me one anyway! Adopting from Nepal seems quite lonely compared to China-- there is no Rumor Queen , no Families with Children from Nepal, no Nepali First Baptist Church, the next Olympics aren't in Kathmandu ... you get the idea... so it's even more special to have someone to talk with, pray with, and wait with on this journey.

And now I'm praying that we'll also be able to receive our referrals at the same time and travel together too. They are also requesting a boy aged 1-3, so I'm also praying that our little fellas are at the same orphanage so that they can maintain their connection after they are adopted. If we receive our referrals within the next year (I don't know how likely that is, so don't go holding me to that) and the boys are 3 at referral, they may be about 2 right now. Will you pray with us that our boys are not only well taken care of, but loved and cherished? And will you pray that God has already begun to whisper in each of their ears, words of love and belonging, and that He would give them visions of who their families are so they *know* us when we arrive? It's never too early to pray for these specifics, and while you're at it, you may as well ask that they are good sleepers, especially on airplanes.

It just keeps on coming!

The good news, that is. The new minister overseeing adoptions has been not only chosen but sworn in. Now kindly get to work, sir!

I have been talking with a couple of friends lately about the joys of adopting an older child, and it has left me so excited to have visions of another child walking beside me, holding my hand. I had the very same vision every time I pictured Lily, and now I know that was God's way of preparing me that she would be a toddler and not an infant.

God has turned my heart away from fear of adopting an older child, and even numbed some of my baby fever. I have always-- and I mean like little girl always-- loved little babies, the tinier the better. I babysat my younger cousins from the time I was 9, and when my first niece was born with a broken collarbone, I was thrilled beyond belief that she couldn't be passed around from one baby-loving relative to the next, but instead had to stay in her very happy and quite smug favorite aunt's arms throughout the many Christmas gatherings just a couple of weeks after she was born. (At 10 1/2, I am not any less thrilled when she climbs in my lap, even though she can now fit into my skinny clothes!)

The point is, I never dreamed that I would not grieve never having a newborn, let alone be excited about adopting older children. When God gives you the desires of your heart, sometimes He has to change them first to conform to His desires. I am so glad He knows what my heart truly needs, and I'm so excited to meet the new child He has chosen to occupy my whole heart.

Yes, some movement indeed!

Write this day down: August 31, 2009. It happens to be our 5 year anniversary of living in this house, but more importantly, it's the day that my first ever adoption hope was proved true-- a family has received travel approval to get their little girl from Nepal! I believe they were one of 3 Gladney families who received their referrals a few months ago, so this should mean that 3 orphans are soon to be united with their forever families. Surely the angels are rejoicing with them!

maybe some movement?

It looks like the families who received referrals a few months ago may finally be getting travel approvals from Nepal within the next week. I hate to get my hopes up since the last bit of information that I thought was good turned out to be nothing... but this could be a sign that things are finally moving again.

The other thing that could be good for us is that 90% of Americans with dossiers in Nepal have requested an infant, so we should technically be moved to the top 10% of the list since we requested a 1-3 year old. The majority of dossiers for other countries are also for infants, I think 60%. You would think there would be a great deal more 1-3 year olds in the orphanages since there haven't been any adoptions within the past few years, and Nepal has said in the past that it is their priority to refer older children first, so this may mean we won't have to wait for years. But if I had a dollar for everything that seemed logical in the adoption world that turned out to be completely false, I could not only pay for our adoption, but everyone else's too! (wouldn't that be cool?)

We have a fingerprint appointment!

I'm not going to bother looking at how long this took-- I feel like it was quick so I'm going to enjoy that feeling for tonight. Our local immigration office has changed the way they do things, so we have an actual appointment date the day after Kyle gets back to town next week (so glad that worked out). I'm thinking last time we had our approval about 3 weeks later, so I'm hoping they're still on track with that timing.

Although that means we won't make the August date for sending in our dossier that I foolishly set as a goal, I will still be happy with early September. The only variable that could potentially set us back further is the state criminal background check. A blog friend just got hers so I have an email into her to ask how long it took... I'm afraid I won't like the answer (there I go with the worry again-- stop it!), so pray she says 3 weeks or less. ***Update: she said less than 30 days. I'll take it!

In other news, I got an email response from our agency about what's going in Nepal, and she basically said that this is not new (the political turmoil) and they aren't worried. I'm hoping it's not their version of the "it will happen in the Lord's timing" answer we always got from our last agency. Not that that's not true-- of course this adoption will go according the Lord's perfect timing, and of course I get tremendous comfort and peace from that truth. However, it gets pretty frustrating when you're looking for something other than an obvious-though-valuable Biblical principle from your adoption agency.

things may start moving in Nepal

According to news reports from Nepal, a minister has now been appointed to head the state agency that handles adoptions. Some people had been told that adoptions would not move forward until that person was in place. Let's hope that the converse is also true, and let's also pray for the new minister, Binda Hada.

Let's also pray that we are able to buy health insurance for our little guy. If the health care bill passes, one of the many ill effects is that the type of insurance we have (high deductible HSA) will no longer be available. Supposedly we would be able to keep it if we already have it (I'm not even counting on that), but no new policies could be written. We pay less than $50 per month for Lily's high deductible policy, and we paid over $400 per month for full coverage for her (only did that one month through COBRA). Obviously that would be a big deal for our family, and many others like us who have individual plans.

Please do your part and sign the petition saying no to more government involvement in our health care-- we can't afford it!

Ready to start again

I've been on a major paperwork hiatus since we've been back from California, but I'm ready to dive in again. I did two whole things in the past 24 hours-- found out where to get fingerprinted for our state criminal background checks and confirmed whether the notary language on one of our documents was going to work. The answers were good, so off we go into a week of paperwork. If we can get our fingerprints done and the application mailed off to Austin, then I think that's the last major piece of info that needs to be sent for. The rest are things I can do in my pj's-- financial docs (copying what we already did for our homestudy) and our application letter and some other easy paperwork-- while we wait for the I-171 from USCIS, or Immigration. I know they cashed our check a couple weeks ago, so hopefully we'll get our request to get fingerprinted in the next couple of weeks and our approval by the end of August. That may be optimistic, but I try to be optimistic about one thing at least once a day.

I also asked our agency rep what she thought about the slowdown and whether we were safe sending a huge chunk of money to a country that was apparently eating the money rather than using it for anything adoption-related. As I was writing the email I was struck by the fact that I never would have asked our China agency something so ridiculous. The canned response would have made me choke on my breakfast, so I never bothered to ask much of anything ("While international adoption is very unpredictable, we know that the Lord is in control and we will be sure to pass along any information that we get. The families that just got referrals waited XYZ months.") They didn't happen to tell you that if you took the square root of XYZ and multiplied it by pi then by your birth year, that would be your approximate wait time, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the wait time of the people who just got referrals (people whom God was not trying to teach patience to, apparently, because of their blink-of-an-eye wait time). Anyway, it will be interesting to see how Nepal Agency's response differs. I'll keep you posted.