Adoption Update

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve updated on our adoption process. A lot has happened since then, so I decided I couldn't wait until after a referral to share where we were adopting from.

We are adopting again from Haiti. I think Haiti has been on our hearts all along, but we were discouraged early this year regarding Haiti's 2-child limit. We looked at a couple other countries, but they just didn't seem right - our hearts were still in Haiti. We were not comfortable adopting if this law was still in place – knowing how long so many families had waited in process before the earthquake to get approval if they needed presidential dispensation because they did not meet the letter of the 1974 adoption law.

We’d followed lots of orphanages in Haiti during and after our adoption of Elijah & Josephine, and decided we wanted to adopt from Gods Littlest Angels orphanage. In May, when I stated the doors opened to us, was when GLA announced they would allow families who had more than 2 children to adopt. Apparently they’d heard from other orphanages in Haiti that presidential dispensations were not an issue any longer – and larger families were being approved in short order as well. I was very excited when I read that email, and we immediately began our paperwork journey... And quite a journey it’s been!

In early July, we had our homestudy visits and most of our other dossier paperwork completed, when Haiti’s president made a statement that he would no longer allow families to do independent (without an agency) adoptions. We’d planned to adopt independently again, just as we’d done for Elijah & Josephine’s adoption. But this was no longer an option. We thought we were within a couple weeks of completing our dossier and mailing it to Haiti, but this caused us some delay.

We looked into the possibility of using just our home study preparer’s agency for oversight, but within a couple weeks, got information that this was not going to be sufficient, per Dixie’s (GLA director’s) blog that, “All adoptive families must use a licensed agency who will have direct contact with the orphanages,” and from GLA’s US adoption coordinator, that “President Martelly doesn't want (orphanages) to have contact with the families until the child is proposed.” So that means we need an agency to be our primary child placement agency, not just oversight for our homestudy and post placement visits.

So we contacted a few agencies that already have a relationship with GLA. Two responded with similar responses. One was a Hague accredited agency, and the other was not. We decided, since Haiti is moving towards Hague ratification, that we’d be safer with the Hague agency, so we decided to go with Bethany Christian Services International. We agreed to continue to put together our dossier on our own (it was nearly completed anyway), and they’d reduce their fees since we would only be working with their international headquarters office in Michigan.

We had LOTS of paperwork to sort through, and it became quite stressful and frustrating. At the height of the stress and frustration, we were told that they would not accept our homestudy, as it was not completed by a licensed agency. It was completed by an independent social worker, licensed to do homestudies in the state of Iowa, but that wasn’t enough. So we also had to sign on with her agency to provide oversight for her home study, and also for the post placement reports we will have to complete after our child comes home. Yes, more fees and paperwork!

Now, more than a month after we were asked to sign on with an agency, I think we are finally moving forward again. We’d already had our entire dossier authenticated, translated, and legalized by the consulate, but our homestudy is being reprinted on agency letterhead, so we’ll have to redo that piece, which will likely take another couple weeks. We’re hoping to have our dossier mailed to Haiti by the end of this month. Also, we have some online training we’ll have to complete in that time too.

Our specific prayer requests now, as we proceed with this adoption process, are that no more surprises come up with the agency adoption, and for the remainder of the paperwork and dossier creation to go smoothly. We’re praying that we’ll be matched with the child God has chosen for our family. Someone encouraged me during the stressful agency sign-on process these last six weeks, that perhaps this delay was helping us get matched with just the right child.

We’re also praying that the Haitian adoption process continues to move along smoothly. For those of you that are familiar with the Haitian adoption process, we’re hearing from a few families we know of that are ahead of us in process, that IBESR approval is taking around 2½ - 4 months (even for families needing presidential dispensation), parquet 3-4 months. Those are the two that took a LONG time when we were in process with Elijah & Josephine. I haven’t heard much about Courts/Judgement or MOI yet. Please pray for our friends and soon to be us in process. We’ll update more after our dossier arrives in Haiti and we get our referral to start the process.