Dear Anonymous Donor,
Jay found your financial gift on his desk this morning. What a way to start the day! We will never know who left the envelope, but we are forever grateful for you. Thank you for helping us bring our daughter home from Nepal! May you be blessed beyond measure for seeking Him and for living out Psalms 82:3. We can hardly wait to share this part of the story with our little girl!
With All our Love and Thanks,
Brooke & Jay
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Good News! Bad News.
After last week’s rather melancholy tone, we were absolutely shocked to receive 2 envelopes in Saturday’s mail from Homeland Security. We have our fingerprint appointment on December 9! What could have taken 12 weeks “seems” to be moving right along. Of course, once we are fingerprinted, no one knows how long it will take the government to process them and issue this 1 final form we are waiting for. For some, this has only taken 2 weeks. For others, this has been the hold-up. But we are once again hopeful that perhaps we can actually be done with all of our paperwork before the close of 2009 as originally planned. WOW!
Things in Nepal right now have halted, unfortunately. We received an email from our agency this week stating “internal conflicts” within the Ministry of Women and Children. I forwarded our email to friends adopting through a different agency. Their agency says that there has been further corruption in Nepal within the adoption program on behalf of some European and some American adoption agencies. When these issues can be solved is not ours to say. But things have come to a halt. No children are being matched and no travel dates are being issued for those who have already been matched to their children! Please pray, on behalf of the waiting Nepali children and their waiting forever families, that the Ministry in Nepal would be able to weed out the corruption and resume issuing referrals and travel dates in a respectable, honorable, above-reproach manner.
Things in Nepal right now have halted, unfortunately. We received an email from our agency this week stating “internal conflicts” within the Ministry of Women and Children. I forwarded our email to friends adopting through a different agency. Their agency says that there has been further corruption in Nepal within the adoption program on behalf of some European and some American adoption agencies. When these issues can be solved is not ours to say. But things have come to a halt. No children are being matched and no travel dates are being issued for those who have already been matched to their children! Please pray, on behalf of the waiting Nepali children and their waiting forever families, that the Ministry in Nepal would be able to weed out the corruption and resume issuing referrals and travel dates in a respectable, honorable, above-reproach manner.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
12 Weeks Left?
This morning I received a very nice wall post on Facebook from a friend looking for an adoption update. Yes, it's been a while. Sorry for that! As I was typing my reply, I received an update directly from our agency.
Our final homestudy was just sent to USCIS yesterday. It was in my head that it had been sent 2 weeks ago when we received our official copy of the home study. But alas, it is still in the mail to DC. And much to my disappointment, we have been informed that it may take up to 12 weeks to be processed, approved and for us to receive that final document we need for our dossier. For those of you looking at your calendars, that would put us back to early February! Oh my! We had hoped to send our complete dossier to Nepal after the first of the year. And now it looks like we could be 2+ months later than hoped.
On the positive side, it does give us more time to fundraise. Gifts have been slow going lately but we're confident that our God will provide.
Please pray that we could receive our approval and final document, as well as the last $2800 we need for our dossier to be finished. And I'm praying to have it before the end of the year, but I know that it's all in His timing, not mine. But "He is able, more than able, to do much more than I could ever dream!"
Updates on the unrest in Nepal? I'm not sure. It's been a busy couple of weeks in our household and I haven't been to the Nepali news websites in a while. Any other adoptive families out there following the news?
Blessings to you all! More updates as they become available, but I guess it might be quite a while before we hear anything (sigh).
Our final homestudy was just sent to USCIS yesterday. It was in my head that it had been sent 2 weeks ago when we received our official copy of the home study. But alas, it is still in the mail to DC. And much to my disappointment, we have been informed that it may take up to 12 weeks to be processed, approved and for us to receive that final document we need for our dossier. For those of you looking at your calendars, that would put us back to early February! Oh my! We had hoped to send our complete dossier to Nepal after the first of the year. And now it looks like we could be 2+ months later than hoped.
On the positive side, it does give us more time to fundraise. Gifts have been slow going lately but we're confident that our God will provide.
Please pray that we could receive our approval and final document, as well as the last $2800 we need for our dossier to be finished. And I'm praying to have it before the end of the year, but I know that it's all in His timing, not mine. But "He is able, more than able, to do much more than I could ever dream!"
Updates on the unrest in Nepal? I'm not sure. It's been a busy couple of weeks in our household and I haven't been to the Nepali news websites in a while. Any other adoptive families out there following the news?
Blessings to you all! More updates as they become available, but I guess it might be quite a while before we hear anything (sigh).
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Unrest in Nepal
Things don't sound great in Nepal right now. There has been much protesting by the Maoist Party and threatening to blockade the entire Kathmandu Valley. Visit www.ekantipur.com for details on what is happening in detail.
This does not bode well for those of us adopting from Nepal, but we pray for a peaceful end to these protests. And in the midst of this, we receive an email from our case worker at our agency:
Dear Friends,
We have received several inquires about the activities recently happening in Nepal. As many of you have read on online newspapers and Nepal Adoption blogs, the Maoist political party has taken to the streets again, for what they call “peaceful” protests. When these types of events happen it is common that the government offices will close down for the day, and this has happened during this time as well. These activities have been happening over the last week. We understand that this is not the news from Nepal you would like to hear, but we strongly believe that the protests are not an indication that the adoption process will come to a halt or be affected in any negative way.
Many agencies in the US are currently awaiting referrals. We have hopeful that we will receive our first referrals by mid November for two families whose dossiers were submitted to the Ministry in the Spring.
Louise
So, please join us in praying for peace in Nepal and that the Nepali children can come home to their forever families across the globe!
In personal adoption news, our certified, notarized, official home study is here, actually in my possession! Three additional copies are on their way to our agency for our dossier and one more copy for the USCIS. That means we should be expecting our invitation to Omaha for our fingerprints. How long will this take? We don't know. For friends of ours, this process delayed their dossier and set them back on their agency's list. But once our fingerprints are processed, we will receive the 1 final piece of documentation for our dossier. We'll be done! Then the real waiting begins.
This does not bode well for those of us adopting from Nepal, but we pray for a peaceful end to these protests. And in the midst of this, we receive an email from our case worker at our agency:
Dear Friends,
We have received several inquires about the activities recently happening in Nepal. As many of you have read on online newspapers and Nepal Adoption blogs, the Maoist political party has taken to the streets again, for what they call “peaceful” protests. When these types of events happen it is common that the government offices will close down for the day, and this has happened during this time as well. These activities have been happening over the last week. We understand that this is not the news from Nepal you would like to hear, but we strongly believe that the protests are not an indication that the adoption process will come to a halt or be affected in any negative way.
Many agencies in the US are currently awaiting referrals. We have hopeful that we will receive our first referrals by mid November for two families whose dossiers were submitted to the Ministry in the Spring.
Louise
So, please join us in praying for peace in Nepal and that the Nepali children can come home to their forever families across the globe!
In personal adoption news, our certified, notarized, official home study is here, actually in my possession! Three additional copies are on their way to our agency for our dossier and one more copy for the USCIS. That means we should be expecting our invitation to Omaha for our fingerprints. How long will this take? We don't know. For friends of ours, this process delayed their dossier and set them back on their agency's list. But once our fingerprints are processed, we will receive the 1 final piece of documentation for our dossier. We'll be done! Then the real waiting begins.
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