Number Nine

We found out yesterday that our dossier was approved and we are officially on the wait list! We are currently family number 9 on the list. That may not sound like a lot, but this program is so small that it may take a while for that many babies to be born. We were told yesterday to expect a 9 to 18 month wait for a referral, which is a lot longer than we had expected. Morning Light Home sent out 165 letters this week to village leaders to try and get the word out about their programs to help pregnant women in need. In a country where there are more abortions each year than there are live births and up to 50% of all Taiwanese women have had an abortion this program truly is shining a light in the darkness. Please pray that these letters will reach the leaders and young women that need to hear this message so that many more lives can be saved. Also, that this new year will be filled with many referrals for the families that would love to welcome these babies into their families!

Waiting Again

Well, after 6 months of never-ending paperwork, 4 homestudy visits with our social worker, 6 online education courses plus an education workbook, medical exams, fingerprinting for FBI background checks, and numerous delays, our dossier has finally been sent to our agency. We received our final homestudy in the mail as an early Christmas present on Thursday, December 23 and had everything notarized that same day. We then headed to Des Moines on Monday, December 27 to the Secretary of State’s office to have everything state certified. When we left there we went to lunch and did a little shopping. We stopped to have everything copied and mailed when I realized that one of the state certifications was done wrong. So, we had to go back to the office and have that one redone. Luckily I noticed it before we got out of town or had it sent in already. Then we stopped at the UPS store on the way home and had everything copied and put in the mail. This time we weren’t so lucky, however, because today I realized that the guy at the UPS store that made the copies forgot to copy the backside of the homestudy sheets, so all of the copies are missing several pages. The good news, however, is that I just heard back from our agency and they said they can make the copies for us there, so we won’t have to resend it. Once our agency receives our dossier it will be sent to Taiwan and we will be put on the waiting list. So, after 12 months of waiting for the program to open plus 6 months of paperwork, now the official waiting begins. We really have no idea what kind of time frame we are looking at to get a referral. We do know that once we receive our referral there is approximately a 4 to 6 month court process that needs to be completed before we can travel to bring our child home. So, originally we thought it would be sometime next year, but now we’re not so sure. It just depends upon how many families are on the waiting list in front of us, how soon that number of babies is born and how quickly our court process goes. It really would be nice to have a special Christmas present home with us next year though or even earlier than that if possible!