Good News and Bad News

Ok, so the good news first. We got a lot acomplished over the past week. We got our local criminal history checks back on official letterhead, we wrote our petition to adopt and got it approved, we worked on our parent workbook, we edited our homestudy and sent it back in, and our passports should be here any day now! I'm pretty impressed at our progress!

Now for the bad news. FTIA (our adoption agency) just posted on their website that the timeframe we're looking at from our Log in Date (LID) until referral has lengthened. Below is a copy of what they wrote.

"Families who are currently receiving referrals from the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) waited approximately 10-11 months after the dossier was officially logged in to the CCAA. This date is often referred to as the "Log In Date" or your "LID." FTIA is able to confirm the LID date with you about 4-6 weeks after your dossier is submitted to our office. Please Note: While we will always be happy to provide information regarding the most recent group of referrals as far as the time between their LID and referral, we cannot and will not attempt to predict when future referrals might arrive. Although it is tempting to try and guess, we do not want to provide information that is not based on fact to our families. We must also remind you that this time frame changes. The continuing trend presently is that we anticipate the wait to become longer and encourage our families to be prepared for such.

The biggest direct impact for the increase in wait time can be seen in the number of dossiers submitted to the CCAA in 2005 versus the number of children available and paperwork ready for matching. Because of a long-term stable program, quick time frames, etc. the number of dossier submitted in 2005 increased dramatically. The U.S. Department of State gave the statistic of approximately 7900 children adopted from China to the United States alone in the fiscal year of 2005. On the flip side, there has been a more subtle decrease of children who are available for international adoption. This could have been caused by better economic standards in China, increases in domestic adoption, changes in social policy, etc.--many less noticeable factors. Of the children available, the orphanages are working on getting children "paperwork ready" to be matched with families. There may also be indirect factors influencing time frames also, but this seems to be the most visible. Right now it is just taking longer to match children with families. We do want to recognize that while this is very difficult, it is not out of the ordinary to see time frames lengthen and shorten. A couple years ago the wait was up to 15-16 months and then dropped gradually back to 6 months; in turn it has been getting longer again. We anticipate the wait times to gradually increase over the next few months and will continue to update our literature, web site and information."

Just thought we'd update everyone on our journey to Abby. PLEASE PRAISE God for His faithfulness, and PRAY that God's timing be perfect (kairos) for when we meet and bring Abby home. Galatians 6:9--look it up!