Please Pray

We got some bad news about our adoption home study today. I finally heard back from the social worker. About a month ago, I gave her a form to approve her checking child abuse registries in the two states we have lived in other than Texas since we were 18 years of age. She let me know today that she still hadn't sent one of them and just sent the other. The one she hadn't sent, I got the remaining information on sending it for her today and sent it off myself. This will take about two weeks to get back, and her report cannot be complete without the information. We were also told that the new guidelines that immigration adopted in April require our adoption agency to review our home study report, then suggest revisions before reviewing the final copy. Once an acceptable final copy has been reviewed, they have to mail us a certificate stating that is correct before we can turn in our paperwork to immigration. This can also take about two weeks.

I asked our adoption agency today if my social worker can go ahead and submit her first draft without the child abuse registry information, knowing that it will have to be added before they can issue the certificate. They said that would be a good idea. I called my social worker and asked her to do that, and she said she would finish things up and send it tomorrow. This will shave off at least three days from the total four weeks of delays.

Unfortunately, we are now in a situation where we are looking at sending our paperwork in to immigration six weeks later than we originally anticipated. We are looking at getting it in mid-August at the earliest. If immigration takes the full three months they said they might, we are already to my due date and will be disqualified from submitting our dossier to China. The dossier has to be received in China before this baby is born per their qualifications. If we miss this deadline, we lose half the total cost of the adoption as well as all the work we have done so far. We would have to wait until this baby was about 7 months old to begin the entire process again and would be allowed to send in the dossier any time after our baby is 12 months old.

I cannot tell you how distraught I am about this. In my heart, I am already attached to this little girl who has not even been conceived yet. She is already my daughter in my heart, and the thought of losing her, even if it is only a delay, is difficult beyond words. Please pray that God works a miracle and causes our paperwork to move through the system faster than normal. I know that he told us clearly to proceed with the process when we first began. It is, and always has been, in his hands and he is more than capable of causing it to all be done before our baby is born. Please pray that he does just that!