Vietnam/Ethiopia Update

These are the photos that we chose to send to Ethiopia.

VIETNAM
Today we got some news regarding adoptions in Vietnam. The bilateral agreement will expire on Sept. 1st. Vietnam has agreed to complete adoptions for the individuals that receive an official referral by Sept. 1st. We were dossier to Vietnam on Nov. 12, 2007. Our agency is estimating a wait time of 6-9 months from the time that your dossier is submitted to the time of your referral. No one knows at this time whether we will make the cut-off. Another statement was released that talks of corruption within Vietnam pertaining to adoptions. This is very upsetting news. Please pray, not only for our adoption, but for the innocent babies that are stuck in the middle.

ETHIOPIA
Our ammended home study was sent to DSS last Friday. We are wating on our pre-approval from the US government (I-171H). Today we completed the financial form and the pictures needed for our dossier. One step closer to our daughter.

Family Photos

Adoption Status

Since some individuals that are reading this don't know us personally, I will tell you a little about us. My husband has two grown sons and one daughter, Anna, who is sixteen years old. Anna lives with us the majority of the time. We have a 3 year old daughter, LiLi, that we adopted from China on March 27, 2006. We also have an 8 month old granddaughter, Ava. They have brought us so much happiness that we have decided to add to our family.

George and I started on our adoption from Vietnam last June. At that time, it looked like we would get our referral of our baby daughter 4-6 months after our dossier was sent to Vietnam. Our dossier was sent to Vietnam on November 12th, 2007. Several things have changed since then. The wait time has increased to 6-9 months. More importantly, Vietnam and the US can't agree on specifics of their bilateral adoption agreement. The bilateral agreement between the two countries will most likely expire on September 1st, 2008. Our agency is hopeful that our case will make it through completely so we will be able to travel to Vietnam to pick up our daughter. The hard part is not knowing for sure.

In the meantime, George and I discussed adopting a daughter from Ethiopia. They are such beautiful children. There are thousands of children living on orphanges in Ethiopia that need loving homes. We are so excited about pursuing this adoption. We are currently working on our dossier. The only thing we are lacking is our I-171H approval. This shouldn't take long since they just update our homestudy from Vietnam. We are requesting a daughter 10-18 months in age. That means that she will come home to us between the age of 16-24 months.