More Good News On The Adoption Front

You may have read in other posts, that there are prospective adoptive parents that already received their referral/match last fall. 41 matches to be exact. However, they had not received the much-needed "travel approval" from the government giving them permission to pick up their child.

Today (1/28/10), I received this e-mail through our Yahoo group from a fellow expectant Nepal Mom:

"I just spoke to our Agency, who made phone contact with our rep. He has spoken with the Ministry and confirmed that they plan to mail travel approvals out on Monday [Feb. 1]. He did not know how many, but had not reason not to believe they all would be going out. He said that the approvals will have varying dates of travel, so that not all 41 families will converge on the Ministry at one time."

I can't wait to hear news of parents that are already matched getting their invitation to travel to come up pick up their babes!

Heather

Nepal Adoptions Moving Again

I just received some wonderful news from a few people on my Yahoo "Nepaladopt" group.

Regarding matches:
"I talked to my agency today and they had really great news. They told me that Nepal has officially started matching again after establishing a new group of people who are only to work with the 2009 matchings.

No new agencies of new applications will be processed until all 2009 families have been matched. They expect to have all 2009 cases matched no later than april."

Regarding travel approvals for those already matched:
"Just heard from our agency that the Ministry met and approved 20 families to travel! Yes, things are moving again."

This is very exciting. There hasn't been movement—travel approvals for those already matched, or more matches made—since September 2009.

Thank you for your continued prayers!

Heather

Update From My Adoption Agency

January 15, 2010

I received an update from my adoption agency regarding where things are at in the Nepal program.

• The coordinator from Nepal visited the US in January 2010, and my agency got to have a conference call with him.
• The coordinator confirmed that the Ministry is committed to completing all cases within the next three months.

Wow...what if we had a referral by the end of March? You never know! Yes, Jesus!

The 2009 List: Destiny

I just received some information from our Yahoo Nepal adoption group, and am blessed beyond explanation to know we are on the 2009 list. They said that Nepal is no longer accepting any new adoption applications until they complete the 2009 applications. And that this included applications for 2009 and 2010.

I am rejoicing in the favor and blessing of God. If we were still on the 2010 list, we would not have even been able to submit our dossier right now, not until the 2009 list had been matched (~500 applications). Yet, on 11/30/09, my agency suddenly had an opening for the 2009 list, we were ready at just the right time, and all of our paperwork got to the Nepal coordinator—an entirely different continent—on the exact day he needed to register by the actual deadline—12/15/09 (only 11 working days later, mind you)—that we might be on the 2009 list.

Our God is a God of destiny!

Debt free!

Our God is amazing! In February of 2009, we joined several others in our church for a 13-week "Financial Peace" class by Dave Ramsey. We were several thousand dollars in commercial debt, including our car. We began to immediately implement the truths and wisdom that we were learning on a weekly basis from Dave Ramsey. (Dave has been affectionately re-named "Uncle Dave" in our household.)

When we decided to start the adoption process at the end of March, we asked the Lord to not only provide the means to adopt debt-free, but to provide the means to get out of debt completely.

Our God is able! By early summer, our car was paid off, and our other debt was getting paid off chunk by chunk. And, in 2009, Andrew and I collectively received six bonuses from our workplaces (unheard of!). Between the bonuses and following Uncle Dave's processes, the Lord provided MORE THAN ENOUGH to get out of debit. On Dec. 21, 2009, we paid off our last credit card payments. WE ARE DEBT FREE! And we still have money in our baby bank account for the adoption process, and it continues to get filled up.

I want you to know, as was shared with us by a speaker at our church, God does not provide just enough, He provides more than enough!

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...