Saturday, January 5, 2008

We’re Not Going to be Lily’s Parents Anytime Soon

There hasn’t been much news to report about our adoption and certainly NO positive news. Most months I don’t even bother to post about how many days were covered by the latest batch of referrals from China. As you can see from the chart below the trend is not looking very good. January has typically been a big month for referrals. In 2006 they covered 18 days and in 2007 (which overall was an extremely slow year) they covered 19 days in January. This January they only covered 5 days. Yikes! This is not looking good at all.

This is sad news for us as waiting parents, but even more important is the impact this has on the lives of the children who are living in orphanages desperately needing loving families of their own. One of the lessons I have learned from this experience is patience, and I can wait as long as it takes for Lily to come home. I breaks my heart though that there are likely tens of thousands of children who need families and tens of thousands of families who are waiting to welcome them into their homes and hearts and bureaucracy is keeping them apart. I hope that in the near future decisions are made at both the local and the national level to reform the adoption system in China in a way that truly puts the children first. I don’t expect this to happen because I know it is an incredibly complex, highly political situation, but I am going to keep holding on to the hope that it will.

1 comment:

Orion Count Drulzelot said...

I'm afraid that is how it is in China these days. When my son went over there this summer and stayed with a family, the student he stayed with was supposed to come here (right after they returned home). It didn't happen. Paperwork was backed up, visas not approved, I don't know, but heard it was something "at the local level". Then they were coming this Oct. Nope. December. Nope. Now they say March. I have no idea how things work over there, I don't think they do, either. So sorry to hear this is taking so long.