News

Okay, so I know I've been a bit absent on the blog this week. I've been feeling like a Debby Downer, it feels like we've had lots of bummer news lately, so I wanted to wait until I had something happy to blog about. Then yesterday, I received an e-mail from our agency that topped off the bummer news. This was what I read when I opened my e-mail:

Dear Philippine Family,

Following is the content of an email we received today from the new Executive Director of the Inter-Country Adoption Board of the Philippines .

Dear Partners:

For the 1st quarter of 2008, we have noted the increase in the number of adoption applications. Although we are pleased that many of your families would want to adopt a child from our country, we are also concerned because we currently have very few children available for inter-country adoption. This would mean that there will be a longer waiting period for child placement.

ICAB and DSWD are exerting efforts to lobby for the passage of the law that will make the procedure of abandonment an administrative process which is one way to fast track the movement of children for inter-country adoption. However, until such time, we are concerned that families will have to wait for a longer period of time (perhaps from two years and longer) before they receive a child proposal from our country. Again, we emphasize the need to encourage your adoptive families to be more open in accepting children with some medical conditions and “with no background information” so that the waiting period for a child placement will be shortened. Kindly share this concern with your adoptive families.

For the past few months we've been hearing that the wait times have gone down down down (average wait time for a referral is down to 11 months currently). We were so pleased to hear that, but didn't place all of our hopes on that, as we knew there was potential of having a loooooong wait. So our attitude was always, expect 24 months and consider anything sooner a big bonus. Normally this news wouldn't bother me because I was already expecting a long wait, but with the other bummer news we've had this week it just felt like a blow. I'm confused about what God has in store for us, since we've been trying to become parents for 4.5 years now. It just feels like more and more setbacks. I guess the bright side of this is that Dave and I get more date nights now??

So that's where I'm at today. I'm sorry I don't have more happy news to post. Hopefully next time...