I hope everyone has enjoyed their summer as much as we have! It’s been so nice to not work every weekend in the summertime now that I’m not working at MD. We’ve actually been able to attend family functions!! August also saw our beautiful girl turn 1 year old. I can hardly believe my baby is so grown. She eats like crazy and grows like a weed!
Last time we really updated everyone we had told you we were officially on the waitlist for our two children from Colombia. After some discussions with our agency, reviewing all the available information, and a lot of prayer we decided to withdraw our file from the Colombian program. Both the difficulty we were having with our agency reps as well as the long wait we would have ahead of us showed us that it was the best for our family at this time. However John and I still feel called to adoption and, as a friend of mine from college would say, this is just a “plot twist”!
Each country has it’s own requirements for adoption. Some require you to be married for a certain number of years, be a certain age, or make a certain amount of money. When we first started on this journey, over three years ago, there were several countries that we were not qualified for. Saturday I mailed off our new contract and addendum so we can officially move over to the China Special Needs program! Both John and I are so sad to say goodbye to Colombia, a place we expected to be a part of for the rest of our lives, but we are at peace with this decision and are getting excited about this new path. While we made this decision we have also decided to apply for a single child, rather than two.
So why the switch? Here are a couple of the points that factored into our decision:
- The China program would end up being several thousand dollars less than Colombia
- Colombia requires 4-8wks spent in country to finalize the adoption, China is just 2wks
- The wait to be matched for 1 or 2 children, even with all the special needs that we are open to, could take 2-3 years. We should be seeing a match from China 4-6mths after we submit our dossier.
- In China's program we would be able to easily be matched with a child under the age of 2
- Because in either case we are open to children who may have special needs, ranging from simple to complex. While Colombia does provide a medical file to review, it can sometimes be lacking in details. When we are matched with a child from China we will be getting a very detailed and lengthy report on their medical history, diagnosis, and treatment.
One of the largest determining factor was the wait time. Like many adoptive couples we are constantly qualifying all of our plans for the future - "oh, that's the first think on our list to fix...after the adoption is over" or "it would be great to getaway for a vacation next year....if we have completed the adoption." Our wait in Colombia would be indefinitely in the future. This change is giving us the opportunity to possibly travel to get our child before the end of 2016.
China requires that both parents are at least 30yrs old before applying. I will be 30 in April – in the meantime we are going to work with our agency to get all our paperwork updated for China and ready to go. On my birthday the cake will read “Happy Dossier Day” rather than “Happy Birthday”! We could get matched only a few months after that – our new agency rep, who has been working with China for over 10 years, believes we should be matched this time next year without any issue. We would even be able to start looking at children on the waitlist by March, so that we could apply for a specific child as soon as we get approved.
We are slowly getting excited, though we are cautious. Even though we have been blessed with Ella in our lives, I still will not feel fully secure in this adoption until they hand us our child. We can definitely use prayers of patience and strength to trust in God's plan!
So there you have it – we may be saying adiós– but we are also shouting nín hǎo!