The Children of the Philippines

In the mist of all my frustration I thought it would be good to take a minute to remember the reason we are doing all of this.  There are so many children living on the streets in the Philippines.  With the world food crisis this situation is not going to get any better.  Many orphanages are having to turn away children, because they do not have the money to feed them. Government agencies are also starting to cut the amount of food they are donating because of soaring food prices. Although this is not the only reason we are doing this, it does make me feel better to know that we are saving at least one child from a life on the streets.  I just wish there was more we could do for these children.

Here is a video that was made for a fundraiser being coordinated by the Lutheran schools in Michigan.  They are raising funds to help Concordia Children’s Services to purchase  their own land.  Concordia is a 25-year-old orphanage in the Philippines and they do not have a permanent home.  The video shows photos of Philippine children on the streets and also those in the orphanage.  I love the music and the photos of the children at the end are beautiful.  Enjoy!

Road Block

You know how I said that our home study was finished, well now it’s not.  We just got a call from our social worker saying that because our adoption agency was just recently Hague accredited they now have to follow all of the new rules and policies.  Since our home study was turned in just after this took place we now have to follow those new policies.  One of these new policies is that we now have to complete a child abuse background clearance for every state or country we have resided in since we were 18.  When we got our Washington clearance done it took a couple of weeks, so I have no idea how long this is going to take.  I will need to do checks from Montana(where I worked for a summer) and also New York(where I served my mission).  Jason will need one from Tennessee(where he did his basic training for the Navy), Florida(where he was stationed), and the Philippines(where he served his mission).  MT and TN do not have child abuse registries, so we have to send notarized letters to them and hope that they can help us out.  I have no idea how we will get the Philippines check done.  Our social worker is still looking into that.

I couldn’t sleep at all last night because I am feeling so stressed and frustrated about all of this.  Just when we were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, someone had to go and turn it off.  I know I need to trust the Lord and realize that this is all happening for a reason, but it is really hard to do when you are caught up in it.  I know that when we finally have our child in our arms I will look back on this and know the reasons why, but for now I just need to feel frustrated and vent for awhile.  We were so close.  All we had left to do was write our own letter of commitment to adopt and get some pictures printed.  I never thought we would have our dossier completed before our home study.  This is just crazy.  I can’t tell you how relieved we will feel when we are finally finished with all of this.  I am just hoping that this is the last thing we will need to do.  I was really hoping to have everything finished this week, because I am getting my wisdom teeth pulled on Monday and I know I won’t be feeling like doing much for a couple weeks after that.  I know we will get around this road block, just like we have all the others, I just wish I knew how long it was going to take. 

Good News

I have two bits of great news to share today.  First, our last reference letters made it to our social worker this week so we have received a draft of our home study today to look over.  Once we look through it and correct any errors then it will be sent on to our adoption agency.  Now all we have left to do is get 2 more reference letters and just a couple of other things done for our dossier and we are done-as far as all the paperwork goes anyway.  Once our adoption agency has our home study and dossier they will send it to the Philippines to get approval from ICAB which takes about 6 weeks, and then our 2 year wait for a referral will begin.

The other bit of great news I have is that the group of siblings that we wanted to adopt to begin with has finally been matched.  I still think about them a lot and have been praying that someone will adopt them soon, so it made me so happy today to see their photo in the matched children section instead of the waiting children.  I guess this shows that these really were not meant to be our kids and that the Lord knows what He is doing.  If we had pushed to adopt these kids we still would not have been able to do so.  You can’t request a match until your home study is completed.  It’s kind of interesting how it worked out that our home study was finished the same day that these kids were matched to someone else.