Just throw us a bone!

We are desperate to see the light. I was at Bible study last night when I heard someone say that when you are depressed you can't even envision the light at the end of the tunnel, everything is dark. I thought about that for a long time and realized that is how we feel about our adoption. After two years, I can't imagine holding our little girl. I can't imagine putting her down in the crib and kissing her sleepy face. I can't imagine the dogs chewing on her toys or visits with her cousins. I used to see it all and slowly it fades. We are desperate for some news. We have to hold on to hope that this is not an endless journey.

Job was not angry at God; he was hurt by God. God made him stronger in the end. We aren't angry, but we are done counting it all joy when we fall into trials. What about Paul and John the Baptist? It didn't end the way they wanted we presume... with persecution, and beheading? Are their mansions just a little bit bigger on the other side?

We certainly don't know the outcome of our toils, but we have to find the strength to know that God will give us freedom from our journey. Thanks for you continued support. Dillen is now 14 months old. We haven't received any updates on her health or any new pictures since November. We will continue to post any news we get.

One week later

One week later and still no update. This can't go on forever. One day you will check this blog and we will be boarding a plane! Unfortunately it hasn't happened yet. Our paperwork has been at DIA for one week now. We are hopeful that DIA works a lot faster than the province officials. We are confident that we will hear SOMETHING in the next week. We are not the only family in this mess. Please keep all six babies in your prayers. Two families were told that they would be able to travel and pick up their boys very soon. Four families including us are still waiting for more information. We are thankful that God has given us patience that we didn't know we had! Thank you for your continued support.

And we step again...

So an adoption is a series of steps, some small, some more like leaps and sometimes you take a few backward. I feel like somewhere this summer we took the wrong path and got lost in the woods. Maybe we are coming out of the woods? Maybe our path is finally crossing with the right one? I don't think you know for sure until you've reached your destination, however we've stepped. Our paperwork has reached DIA. That is all we know.
Thanks for your continued prayer and support. We cannot wait to actually share our journey to Vietnam with you all.

The end of Tet

We received an email last week that Tet was ending and our agency had spoken with Thuoc our facilitator in Vietnam. We did not have clear information if our paperwork had already been sent to Hanoi or if it was waiting to be sent. We emailed our adoption provider and asked if we could share the cost with the other families and have Thuoc deliver our paperwork to Hanoi personally so he could explain each adoption case and hopefully get an answer quickly about how each adoption would proceed. Our adoption provider contacted Thuoc to see if this was possible.

Thuoc called DIA to see if this was possible, and they told him to be patient. We don't know what that means, but I would assume that they don't think he should travel. Maybe they want to look at all the paperwork without him present, we don't really know. We still have no idea if our paperwork has already been sent. We certainly hope for more answers in this unsolved mystery. None of this makes sense.

On a side note, please keep us in your prayers. These past few months have been increasingly more difficult for everyone. Chris' hours at work have been cut these last few months and we have struggled to pay our bills. Many of you know that I work with my family in a small business that has been hit hard by this economic crisis. We have all recently seen pay cuts and for Chris and I it means that we can't keep our head above water. At this point,we do not know how we can financially complete our adoption. I ask that you continue to pray for God's wisdom and guidance as we seek His will.

Is it still Tet?

I know so many of you check the blog daily, and hopefully there will be some daily excitement soon. Unfortunately, it is still Tet for another week in Vietnam, so we have no news. We haven't heard from our agency, our facilitator or DIA (Dept. of International Adoption in VN). We don't think that we will hear anything for at least another week. Sorry to disappoint. We have not received any pictures of Dillen since the Blackwell family left in November. Boo!

We have around us many people whose lives all tell us

what faith means. So let us run the race that is before us

and never give up. We should remove from our lives anything

that would bet in the way and the sin that so easily

holds us back. Let us look only to Jesus, the One who

began our faith and who make it perfect.

~Hebrews 12:1-2a

TET in Vietnam

At the end of the week we got a phone call from our agency to explain our situation a little further. We know that there are six babies still in Hau Giang waiting to go home. Two of the babies had all their papers signed and those families should be able to travel and bring their boys home after Tet (which is most like a Vietnamese New Year). These babies were brought to the home this spring, and the parents weren't given the referral until Sept 08. Four other cases, ours included, will head back to DIA and wait for them to make a decision on the next step. We have been told that whatever DIA decides about our case, the province leaders WILL do.

It will either go one of two ways...

#1 DIA will tell the province leaders to sign the papers and finish our adoption, which means we pack and get ready for our trip to Vietnam. Once DIA makes that decision it literally could take just a few weeks before we are on the plane...

OR

#2 DIA will ask that our case be reclassified as a different kind of abandonment and all of our paperwork and investigations will have to be started over. This includes a ad in the newspaper searching for birthfamily that has to run for 30 days, and much more. #2 will add significant time on to our already 2 year adoption process.

Whatever the case, because it is Tet in Vietnam our papers won't even arrive at DIA until after the holidays. We were told it would be between 25-4o days before we would know ANYTHING.

This of course is not what we had hoped for or expected, however we are grateful that our paperwork is not just sitting on a desk in the province like it has done for the last 6 1/2 months.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to remain positive as we watch our daughter grow in pictures.

Some Clarification

We recently received a little more clarification on the meeting. Apparently our case is being sent back to DIA (Dept of International Adoption) in Hanoi. We are unclear if our police report was approved and going back just for a double check like the families that have traveled before us, or if the province leaders could not make a decision in our case and have asked for help from the DIA to decided how to proceed with our adoption. Either way, we truly believe that this is a fantastic step for our case. It is good to know that our paperwork is somewhere other than a desk. DIA approved our case in June, we are hoping they can now finish the details in our case so that we can FINALLY get our daughter home.