Wednesday, December 3, 2008

December 2008 update

No, we don't have any exciting news to report on the adoption front. I thought it may interest you all to hear some information from Holt, the international adoption agency we are working with for our China adoption. This was emailed to us yesterday:

As you all know, the wait for the standard China process has continued to be very long and difficult throughout the past year. We feel for China families who have been waiting so long.  It is not currently known how long the wait will extend.  However, please remember that after each family completes their wait they can expect to be matched with a child. 
 
Our next group of families expecting the match of a child from China will have waited over 36 months from the time their dossiers were sent to China (DTC) to the time they received a referral.  The next group of dossiers awaiting match through Holt was logged in on February 28, 2006. 
(NOTE: the Kragel's DTC was Feb 2007).
 
As the CCAA works through the huge backlog of waiting dossiers, time frames will continue to lengthen. 
 
There are two main factors that have contributed to lengthening time frames for the standard process over the past two years:
- Overall number of family dossiers logged in to the CCAA in 2006 and 2007
- Overall decrease in the number of healthy child dossiers received by the CCAA from orphanages
 
Other factors that may affect wait times in coming years:
- There was a marked decrease in the number of family dossiers logged in to the CCAA after May 2007 due to tighter eligibility guidelines
- Fewer families are choosing to adopt from the China standard process due to lengthening time frames
- Families who sent dossiers in the standard process who later accept the match of a child with a physical condition through the Child of Promise Option switch to the expedited process and out of the standard process 
- There has been a greater number of families switching to other international or domestic programs or withdrawing from the China standard process due to lengthening time frames
 
We have no way to know how and when the above factors will impact wait times.  However, based on the current match trends and our experience, we anticipate that the wait for referral will continue to lengthen.  The CCAA continues to match families in order of dossier submission.  Although it is impossible for us to predict precisely how long your individual wait will be, it's important to understand that we do anticipate the overall time frames to lengthen over the coming year.
 

As you can see, the chance of receiving a baby from China in the near future is very small.  We continue to work with Bethany Christian services in hopes of being matched with a birthmom in the midwest or maybe even Iowa. We know that the book we made about ourselves continues to be shown to birthmoms. We continue to wait.

In the meantime, we are enjoying life. We are very blessed with our health, our jobs, our cozy home with TWO Christmas trees, and our families. We continue to be part of an adoption team at our church; the vision of the church is to develop some sort of adoption ministry in order for families to be able to adopt children without it being such a financial strain. We really don't know what God's got in store for this vision/church, but we continue to network and pray. Lonnie and I are also planning on leading a marriage class at our church in January. The class is associated with the movie "Fireproof."

We hope that you all are enjoying this advent season. Take time to sit back and be content with what God's blessed you with.