Patiently Waiting for Little Slom #3

It's hard to believe it was 2 1/2 years ago that we began this journey to Little Slom #3.  We knew going into it that it would be a long wait.  Although we did not anticipate the bumps in the road that we encountered, like the Colombian government shutting down the orphanage we were adopting from.  But adoption is not for the faint of heart.  No matter how much you plan, nothing is in your control.  You need to be patient and roll with the punches, knowing that it'll happen when it is meant to be.

In the past couple months, some major changes have been happening in Colombia.  In July, Colombia closed adoptions for healthy kids aged 0 to 6.  There are nearly 4,000 families on the waiting list to adopt a 0 to 6 year old.  For families adopting through ICBF (the government adoption program), the current wait time is estimated to be around 7 years.  Due to the long wait, the government decided to stop taking applications until all the families currently waiting are united with their children.  While this change didn't impact us since our paperwork has been in Colombia since October 2011, it did impact some of our friends who were planning to start the adoption process at some point in the near future.  Luckily they were all able to pull together enough of the paperwork by the deadline to get accepted into the program.

The 7 year wait that I mentioned above is for families adopting through the government program.  Since we are adopting through a private home, the wait should be much shorter, probably around 12 to 24 months.  This wait time usually starts when your dossier is delivered to the orphanage so we could have a long stretch in front of us.

In July, we got the opportunity to talk with Elena, the head of the FANA orphanage and the daughter of the orphanage's founder, when she was here with her family for the annual fundraiser.  She told us that FANA is nearly at full capacity.  They have a lot of kids there that are in need of a home.  Unfortunately the government hasn't been signing off on the kids so they are stuck in limbo at the orphanage just waiting for their paperwork to be processed.  It's heartbreaking knowing these kiddos are growing up in an orphanage when there are so many families that are ready and willing to bring them home.

After a long 6+ month stretch of no referrals to Minnesota, in July our friends got the referral of their precious baby boy!  We are thrilled for them!  Hopefully there will be a couple more referrals yet this year.  Even if it's not our referral, we are always happy to hear about our Minnesota FANA family growing.

While we have no idea when we will be finding out about our little one, we did get some great news.  On June 11, 2013 the Adoption Committee at FANA approved our application to adopt!  So now it is just a matter of time.  We couldn't be happier to be a waiting family at FANA once again. 

With such a long wait, much of our paperwork has had to be updated.  We just finished our home study for the third time and our psychological evaluation for the second time (a 2 hour interview followed by a 567 question test - definitely not a fun process!)  Our next step is to update our I-800 and we should be good on paperwork for awhile.

I think one of the best decisions we made during this long 2 1/2 year wait was to build a house.  It was such a time consuming project that the past year has flown by.  And now that we have moved into our new home and the baby's room is all set, we will continue to wait for our little one until the time is right.

"I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope."  Psalm 130:5