The wait....

That's a picture of a caretaker watching two little Chinese babies in an orphanage (Social Welfare Institute is the official name for it). Now that the play is over and I have time to think....I find that I am making myself crazy in waiting for my adoption referral. Having that play consume so much of my time and energy was really useful to keeping me sane. I still have plenty to do around my house, but everything is taking a back seat to my adoption! All week I have been glued to the yahoo groups that I belong to, hoping to hear the news of referrals for the groups that are waiting ahead of me. Today referrals started pouring in...The referrals that are coming in today cover those adoptive families whose dossiers (thats the term for all the paper work that is sent to China) were logged into China's Central Adoption Agency up through January 27. My dossier was sent to China on February 17 and logged in on March 8. I could very easily be in the next group of referrals, which typically come from China about every 4-5 weeks or so...more likely I will be in the group after that... but even the possibility of thinking I could know as soon as next month the name and face of my little child and where she or he is living is almost more than I can comprehend! I hope I can develop some paitence.

Whew!

The production that I directed of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for the stake (church) is finally over. It was a great success and I am proud of the accomplishments made. Everyone worked very hard and it was very entertaining. Some commented that they liked it better than professional productions they had seen and even some liked it better than the DVD version.... Anyway, not bad for a group of amatuer church folks. Now that the production is over, I am focusing (mainly) on only one thing! MY ADOPTION! It is so exciting to start preparing for the big day. I bought a crib last week and I started a baby registry, so I am starting to feel "official"...but I still have so much to do. I need to get the nursery all situated and all the extra junk around my house cleared out. I expect my referral to come in September. There is a very slight chance it could come next month, but I really doubt it. Anyway, I am trying to settle on a name...I had decided on Rachel...but lately I am really loving the sound of Sarah...or maybe something else? I think I won't know for sure until I see a picture of her. And then of course there is the remote possibility that it will be a boy!

The Process

OK.. I've had so many people want to know how this whole process works. So, here is how it has been for me - some of it is pretty typical of all people adopting from China.... Deciding to Adopt...Well, I could write a novel on this subject...but for me whether to adopt or not was never an issue, the only issue was timing. For as long as I can remember - at least junior high maybe, I have always dreamed of having a rainbow family. Lots of kids from lots of different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities and so on. I always assumed I would have some biological kids and some adopted kids. Well, the biological kids never happened. I never got married. But I KNEW that I was supposed to still have my kids...so I decided to Adopt. So I started looking into it in about 2002. I just was mostly gathering information and trying to make the next big decision.... Where to Adopt From? Ever since I first visited China in 1986 with the Young Ambassadors, I have been fascinated and loved the Chinese culture, language and so on. So it was a natural choice for me to want to adopt from China. Of course when I was finally ready, I ran into one major hurdle....the Chinese government has restrictions on the number of single women that can adopt. Specifically, at least for the U.S. , it is 8% of all adoptions could be to singles. Each agency had a quota of how many they could do. So every agency I called told me that I would have to wait. Some had lists, some had lotteries once a year, some weren't taking singles at all because of the size of their agency and the numbers they already had. So I was told that it would be at leat 2 to 4 years!! Boy was I discouraged. So I started looking at other possibly places to adopt from...and there were so many great options - Haiti, Russia, Kazakstan, Ethiopia, etc. etc. I didn't know where to go, because I saw that there was a great need, but I knew that I needed to find MY child. So I prayed a lot and did a lot of research. I also considered a domestic adoption and decided to start the process to do that, then if I changed to a specific country later, that would be alright. Well, finally last November, after a lot of searching for answers and looking at a lot of options, one of the agencies that I had talked to two years earlier called and told me that I was finally at the top of the list to adopt from CHINA!! I knew it was time and it was right. I was ready to go. So, just after Thanksgiving I started my adoption paperwork with Associated Services for International Adoption of Oregon (ASIA for short).