The Waiting Has Begun

Our greatest gift to one another on Christmas day was our completed dossier. In fact, it was our only gift! We joyously put our completely packet of Nepal requirements for adoption paperwork under the tree with a big red bow on top. Then, on Christmas morning, we opened it up and went through all the paperwork, reminiscing about the adoption journey so far. Yep...we are officially waiting!

Thank you to everyone who prayed for us to be on the 2009 list. The Lord's hand was truly on our dossier, and everything needed arrived into the hands of the Ministry in Nepal literally on the deadline, Dec. 15. It's a bit of a long story, but all I can say is - the Lord did want us on that list because He got us on it just in the nick of time! Thank You, Jesus!

Now that we are officially "prospective adoptive parents," (PAPs) we are learning even more about international adoption, especially in Nepal. One of the many things we're finding out is that by getting on the 2009 list, we'll likely have a baby in 2010. Had we been on the 2010 list, it probably would have been 2011 before we had a baby.

Even with being on the 2009 list, we are at the bottom of the list, and our hope is that we have a baby by the end of the year. (Our prayer is that we have our baby much sooner than that!) We have not received our official registration number yet, which will tell us where we are in the line of those waiting, but we think we're around #490. So, there are lots of people ahead of us, but everyone hasn't asked for the exact same specifications. Some have asked for kids older than 12 months; some for siblings; some for special needs; and some have specified a gender. We have asked for an infant, boy or girl. It's good we did not specify a gender, but babies do take longer to wait for because there are several people that have asked for a baby. But we are confident that the Lord has picked out our baby for us.

Nepal is very behind in matching PAPs to orphans. The reasons for this are numerous, but there are two primary ones: culture and politics. Culturally speaking, Nepal just moves a whole lot slower (if you've been to India, you know what I mean). Politically speaking, Nepal continues to be in a state of unrest, and those in the Ministry that are responsible for the matches get caught up in it. Recently, they fired a few people in the Ministry and hired replacements. So that also slowed things down.

All of this to say, there are only 22 orphans that are with their forever family now....That's 22 in 2009 out of nearly 500 families that are waiting! There are about 40 other PAPs that have been matched since last September, but the Ministry has not given them approval to travel to pick up their children yet. We are also told that several other matches have been made, but the Ministry has not sent out the picture and medical reports yet to the PAPs.

The Ministry met on Jan. 4 and 5 and hopefully they are going to get moving again. For goodness sake, there are over 400 PAPs waiting to be matched with their destined babes. Including us.

Thank you for prayers and love. We look forward to the day when we are on the other side of adoption...