Category: Adoption

China has a national holiday May 1-7th and the CCAA will be closed. The adoption community is praying for the next batch to be mailed before they go on holiday. (Get their desks clean and all that before vacation). It has been posted that they will be working this weekend to make up for being off the next week, so they could possibly send a DHL package Monday. That would have early calls to families coming through as early as Wed the 2nd. If not, the next set of referrals will not come until after their holiday.

I have no idea how far they might get and I am not guessing. Rumors are flying and feet are stomping on all the adoption groups and message boards. I am just keeping busy with the end of the school year events for KIDS HOPE. That is more than enough to keep anyone distracted. Hee hee. If you ever need to be cheered up, spend some time with elementary school kids.

The rumors that I heard on Thursday have come true. The CCAA only matched 2 DAYS in this referral cycle. According to a woman who has tracked referrals since 1997, this is the lowest number of days they have ever matched, but it is supposedly the month that they received a record number of applications. I have repeatedly seen that the rest of Oct 2005 days were giant like 10/25 and 10/26. What does that mean for us? For now it means that are definitely not in the May batch. Possibly not in the June batch. I told Mike we need to start telling people we are getting her at Christmas.

So looking over the databases that adoptive parents have set up online (lots of time for this during the wait) here is what we could possibly be facing and what I am preparing for.

May batch: 10/27-10/30 (I am only including the 29th and 30th because it’s a weekend and pretty much no LID’s)
June batch: 10/31 – 11/1 (these days reportedly contain huge amounts of LID’s like 10/25 and 26)
July batch: 11/2-11/5 (and more?)

This would have us traveling around September. Do I really think it’s going to be that bad? Your guess is as good as mine, but I have to prepare for it. We could make it in the June batch, but I would rather think July so I don’t get excited again. International Adoption is unpredictable and we knew this going in, but somedays it can just catch you off guard. So we are just going to make plans and continue on. God is good and we know that we will get exactly the baby He has for us. But I would be lying if I didn’t say that my heart is hurting today.

Or Nadia’s finding place? Those are the $64,000 questions my friends. I have been closely following a lot of the blogs of families traveling now that were in our DTC group, but had an earlier LID and it seems to be a coin toss. One group has 5 families and only 1 is going to be able to see the orphanage becuase it’s the closest. I really have been praying that we get to see where Nadia was in the months that she waited AND and even more amazing thing would be to see where she was found. It varies, but the most common time is the middle of the night (obviously) and common places are the market-place, the police station door or the orphanage door. Some babies are left in parks all bundled up in an area where people may come in the morning to walk, play games or practice Tai-Chi. Sometimes they have a note like, “This is the 3rd daughter of the Li family and we sadly could not keep her. Please provide her with a good life.” Some notes list their birthday, but most babies you know nothing about.

I think that would be incredibly emotional, but to have those photos for Nadia’s life book and the questions she will most certainly have later would be an amazing gift for her.

Well I talked to the agency this week and they say we will NOT make the cut for the April referral batch. So they said to look forward to May. I was very sad when I got off the phone, but we know that God works everything out in His perfect time. Nadia won’t be ready in 3 weeks, she will be ready in 7 weeks. And I just know that when we see her face all of the waiting will be worth it.