The good news and the bad news

Good afternoon~

We just got an email from our social worker letting us know we are officially DTC today. DTC is an acronym for dossier to China. In essence, it means our dossier is leaving our adoption agency and being forwarded to the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) in China. We are thrilled of this news.

So, what now? Oh how we wish the news was good. Quite frankly, it is beyond discouraging. Once the CCAA receives our dossier, they will log it in. That log-in-date (LID) is what starts the clock for us. Right now the wait between LID and referral is approximately 24 months. That timeframe could increase or decrease but the wait has been increasing for quite a while now.

Here's a little background to give you an idea of how slow things have gotten. On April 15, 2005 (2.5 years ago and one day) our dossier was sent to China for Lindy. Our LID was May 9, 2005, our referral date was January 25, 2006, and we met her on April 3, 2006. We waited 8.5 months for a referral. Believe it or not, the CCAA is still processing dossiers from 2005. They are FINALLY into December 2005 LIDs. In the 18 months we've had Lindy, a little over 6 months of paperwork has been processed.

Why so long? That is the question often posed to us. That remains a great mystery and we don't think we'll ever know the answer during this lifetime. There are probably several reasons that the wait has increased so significantly.

As crass and awful as it sounds, a lot of it boils down to basic economic principles of supply and demand. In other words, there are more people waiting to adopt than there are available children. Now that doesn't mean there are only a few children in the orphanages--there are thousands. However, so many (NOT ALL) of prospective adoptive parents are requesting non-special needs children who are as young as possible and these days there just aren't as many. That could mean more biological parents are keeping their children--no matter the gender, it could mean they are opting to pay the steep fines to have more than one child, it could mean there are more special needs children, and, sadly, abortion could be on the rise. There are some other reasons such as many of the orphanages don't participate in international adoption and children are being given away to family members rather than being abandoned.

We're torn about how to feel about this. In our hearts, we hate the fact that there are children in any country who are orphans. We don't "wish" for a big surge of healthy abandoned babies in China so that we can finally have our daughter. We know God led us to adopting Lindy and He has led us to China again. So, we will wait...

We believe God can do anything. We believe in his power and might. While we don't have the answers or know the reason behind the delays, we know He does. Our prayer is that God will affect some change in China and allow for this process to speed up by leaps and bounds. We know He can do it if it His will. We pray for all the children and for all the waiting families that it is His will. We ask you to join us in that prayer, as well.

We also petition your prayers for our patience and for us to remain faithful and optimistic about this long journey. There will be discouraging and disappointing days and days where we will question our decision. We know this. Please pray those days will be few and far between and for us to diligently pray for our daughter's birth parents, caretakers, and her overall health and safety.

Thank you with love~

Don & Lisa