Changing Directions, New Look

A new look is called for since we are changing directions. We are still adopting, but after the past few weeks, we've weighed our various options and don't see much of a likelihood that Vietnam will continue adoptions after September 1st and since there is no chance that we will get a referral before that time, we have decided that we must change countries. Our two best options were Ethiopia and domestic here in the United States.



With domestic, you are chosen by the birth mother to parent the child. The waiting list for a healthy white infant could be 2 years or more, it really depends on the birth mother if they choose you or not and there are so many other adoptive parents hoping to be chosen. We would be open to a child of any race or mixture of races; now the expected wait there maybe a year or so (much less than for a Caucasian infant), but the birth mother still has to choose you. There's so many legal loopholes, too; although the agency that we looked at has never had a birth parent take the child back after the child was living in your home, there's always a first time for everything.



With Ethiopia, the current wait is expected to be 6 to 11 months. At this time many people are getting referrals at our agency at about 5-6 months after sending in the dossier. Our current agency works with Ethiopia and gets referrals quite often. Just in the past week there were 8 referrals. Some of our money would transfer over to the new program, not a lot but some of it would. The cost for each of the programs would be similar, since the domestic agency is on a sliding scale when it comes to family. All in all though, they really aren't that expensive compared to some other domestic adoption programs.



So what have we decided, you're asking. Well, we are still waiting for approval from the agency, but we've decided to go with Ethiopia and to stay with CHI as our adoption agency. I'm not sure what is taking so long for approval, but it looks like everything will be a go. We'll need to have our homestudy updated, change over our 171-H to Ethiopia with the Citizenship and Immigration and work on a new dossier.

Tragedy strikes the Stephen Curtis Chapman Family

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MIA No More

I want to thank all of those who left comments on this blog or e-mailed me, I apologize if I didn't reply to everyone this has been a very emotional and confusing time. I really appreciate your concern and friendship during this time. Those of you with blogs, I have been following along, although I may not have commented often, if at all.

Those of you in the Vietnam adoption community know what I'm talking about, but for those of you, not involved in Vietnam adoptions, I'll let you know what is going on. Over the past few weeks, Vietnam has announced that they will not be continuing adoptions with the United States. They will continue to accept applications up to July 1st, but anyone who has not received a referral by September 1st will have their dossier returned to their agency. Just before this announcement the U.S. Embassy released a long report on corruption involving Vietnamese adoption. The report makes it appear that corruption is rampant. Yes, there is corruption, but it is nowhere near as prevalent as they make it out to be. It is mainly isolated to a few provinces, a few orphanages and involving possibly a few agencies. The vast majority of adoptions are believed to be ethical and not corrupt. The U.S. is also trying to force Vietnamese parents who gave up their child willingly to take DNA tests in order to prove that they are the biological parents of the relinquished child. Plus there are several other areas that the U.S. government is trying to take control of things that if a foreign government was trying to do in the U.S., they would object to it just the same as the Vietnamese government is doing. Vietnam has just gotten fed up with the U.S. and refuses to work with them anymore. This is leaving many hundreds of families in limbo.

Where does this leave us? If you remember, at the beginning of April, we did send our dossier to Vietnam. But our agency has a very long waiting list and earlier in the year, they were told that whatever dossiers were in the country by September 1st when the current agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam expired, they would still give referrals to any of those families, even if it was after September 1st. But that was then, and this is now. And with how long our agency's waiting list is and the fact that we are #86 on that list, as well as that the number of referrals, our agency is getting is down greatly, we stand no chance at all of getting a referral by September 1st. It has been several weeks, since our agency has even gotten any referrals at all. So the past few weeks, we have been thinking, talking and praying on what to do and researching what our other options are. We are hoping very soon to make that announcement, but until it has happened, we will keep it quiet for now. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers and we promise to share things with you soon!

Just wanted to let you all know, we're alive. But after the news the past couple weeks, I just could not get myself to post. I'm working on a post and just need to find the time to type it out.