Child of Promise part 2

Another little pitch for the China Child of Promise option...yesterday our adoption agency, Holt, matched a group of families going through the standard adoption process with China. These families matched had dossiers (paperwork) completed and logged on March 3, 2006! They've waited for over 3 years to get matched. I can't even imagine waiting that long.

I spoke with someone at Holt today and found out that since we are open to a child with cleft lip/palate, our current wait time to get matched is 1-3 months tops. Wow, that took our excitement to another level! Another piece of good news is that we found out that this certificate of citizenship Paul and I have been bemoaning in this blog, is not even needed! The guidebook with all the processes states you need it, but a staff person at Holt told us that there have been a few cases where people lost their certificates and just wrote a letter explaining their situation and included a copy of their U.S. passport and the Chinese government accepted it. Ugh, on one hand all that worry and stress for nothing, but more importantly, we don't have to be held back by it anymore!

So now, because there are so many available children with cleft lip/palate, it looks like we can get matched pretty soon after we get our dossier in. All we are waiting on for that is the approval of our I-800A application (immigration services pertaining to suitability to adopt).

This was just the information I needed to encourage me today. It has been a stressful few months where all I could see was a long paper trail ahead of me. Thank you Lord.