Another batch of referrals closer

Yesterday the yahoo groups were busy with people posting referral news. The CCAA website officially changed to read, " The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before May 25, 2005." On one hand this is good news seeing we are one batch closer on the other hand it is disappointing to see they only referred out 12 days of Log in Dates.

When our paperwork got to China on June 13th the wait from Log In Date (LID) to referral was about 6 or 7 months. We were hoping to get our referral around December or January. Unfortunately everything slowed down in November and it started to look like this:

On October 3 families with LID of Feb 28-March 17 recieved their referrals
On November 11 families with LID of March 18-March 31 recieved their referrals
On December 9 families with LID of April 1-15 received their referrals
On January 3 families with LID of April 15-25 received their referrals
On January 25 families with LID of April 26-May 13 received their referrals
And on February 27 families with LID of May 14- 25 received their referrals

We are still 18 days away from our LID. I am not hopeful that our referral will be in the next batch sent out late March. Our agency being smaller also seems to get them a little later than the larger agencies. If we do not get our referral until April we will not travel until June. I am not sure I can even wrap my mind around traveling any later than June. I trust that CCAA is doing their best to get these referrals out. I hear they do 1500 referrals a month. However, the amount of families looking to adopt from China is growing and things are slowing down. Pray that they get caught up and by some miracle they send out a full month of LID in the next batch.

I am keeping busy teaching two courses this semester. I am not sure if the teaching is making the time go faster or I am too tired to notice how slow things are moving but either way it seems to be doing the trick. Steve, while still frustrated with the wait, is seemingly handling it better.

We finally attended the Asia Adoption Seminar. This is a mandatory class offered by my agency. We originally signed up for a date in November. The class was rescheduled to a date I was presenting at a conference and could not attend. We registered again for January but that date was cancelled. We tried again for Feb 11 but that was cancelled because of a prediction of snow. Yes, here in Maryland they cancel when there is just a prediction of snow. We did get about 13 inches of snow but it did not start to accumulate until well after the class would have been over. So the class was rescheduled once again. We finally did attend on 2/26. It was a good class. A friend of mine who adopted a girl from China two years ago led the class. We discussed attachment and bonding, expectations, the trip in China, nurturing the self esteem of our daughters, becoming a multi-racial family, creating an adoption story, positive adoption language, etc. It was very informative. We even left with a notebook of articles to read to gain even a deeper understanding of the process. So with this under our belts we are yet another step closer.

Keep us in your prayers as the days pass. We pray that we get our referral soon. It is so hard not knowing anything. Once we get our referral we will know if Sophie spent time in an orphanage or with a foster family, her age, her birth date, her size and weight, her health status and we will have a face to attach our dreams on.

Anne