Waiting and Prayer

I may need to give up reading adoption blogs. Way to many stories of excited families celebrating short timeframes in Haiti only to be still in the process months or years past when they hoped to bring their children home.

This shows that even in the past how unwise looking at other people's time frames and trying to guess the whens could become. So many heartbreaking stories of delays [for errors or unknown reasons] even when using the timeframes from their agencies.

Now no one knows as the new process really does not have any 'time frames' yet. I'm sure that if I took a time frame and doubled or tripled it knowing how things can go a tiny part of my brain would insist on reminding me of the shortest possible one.

While many of these blogs believed as we do that the Lord can do great and mighty things very often reality looks way different than what we would like to hope and dream. But we must believe that He knows best, while praying against the delays of the devil.

Is a delay good or bad…only the Lord with His infanate wisdom and knowledge of the future can know that so we dare not speculate.

Would it not be 'nice' to turn off that small counter in our minds and therefore be pleasantly surprised when the next step's completion becomes known to us. But would that lessen the frequency and intensity of my prayers?

 If so then that price I would not pay, for the power of prayer remains our strongest tool against evil.

One need not read very much about adoptions to realize that that battle for children needing good stable families is intense. The realities of evil and abuse stand in the way of healing in forever families.

Prayers:

• Praising the Lord for 2 families we know who now have tickets to go home.
• Praying for the IBESR staff working on old cases, transition cases and new.
• April 1st change to the Hague
• Praying for our referral, the time frame, crèches involved, staff 
• Praying for our children

Transition to Hague.

A bit late for Valentine's but heart shaped. 

“Joint Council extends it congratulations to Haiti on achieving what few developing countries have; an uninterrupted transition to the Hague Convention. We also applaud both DOS and USCIS for their positive approach and efforts regarding Haiti’s transition to Convention adoptions.

Again, our congratulations to Haiti for this unprecedented achievement.”

This means that the meeting went well and the USA will not put adoptions on hold from Haiti.

Many agencies sent out the good news yesterday, reporting that the U.S. government 'expects to confirm the Haitian Adoption Authority as compliant with Hague adoption standards'. 

So after April 1st a different form will need to be filed for parents adopting from Haiti.

Also at this meeting they announced that the U.S. worked with the Haitian officials to create a plan for the transitional cases that are currently in process.

 That would be us as we received our I-600A approval last fall.

The last part of the announcement was that the U.S. Department of State, USCIS and the Haitian adoption authorities formed a working group to 'evaluate and improve their working relationship'.

All sounds good and the intentions of blocking child trafficking, improving adoptions and hopefully speeding up the process are good goals but it remains to be seen how things will work.

IBESR reportedly has over 460 'old process' charts waiting to move. They will now have 'transitional cases' like ours and after April 1st, Hague process charts. Lots to keep straight.

Prayers:

• Thankful for the process without a shutdown.
• Praying about our referral. Some guess it will be 6-8 months on average for a referral.
• Praying for IBESR staff. 
• Praying for our children. Heard reports from Port and Cap areas about chicken pox in a couple of crèches/orphanages.