Well, here we go. There is a lot of back and forth news so I'll try to make everything as clear as possible.
About a month ago there was a problem with the American Embassy in Vietnam and one of the orphanages we work with. They felt like the Americans at the Embassy thought they could do what ever they wanted without going through the proper channels so they quit giving American referrals. They did start up again and we thought everything was ok. Then we got our license to work in the third province, wonderful. We just got word from Vietnam that we are only allowed to get referrals of children who come to the orphanage after our license became valid. There have been children to come to the orphanage since then, but the way it works is that the children, for obvious and very valid reasons are not available for adoption until Dec. For those of you not in the adoption world; the children have to go through health screenings, work has to be done to make sure these children are truely orphans- those types of things.
Now, we received word a couple of days ago that the orphanage director from the province that said he would not work with the US is now saying this again. Relations with the third province are going very well and we should start getting referrals soon, well in about 2 weeks. The first province is still working with the US and things are going fine.
We still expect our referral to come before the end of the year and that is fine. We know that our adoption is in God's hands and he will take care of us. You might remember that in the last blog I mentioned that requirements for the I600 had changed, but that we didn't know when it would go into affect. Well, it has gone into affect. It doesn't change anything for us as far as more or less paperwork, but it does affect our travel time.
With the new regulations the I600 is now filed at the time we accept our referral. That means at the time that we say "Yes, we accept this child." Before; we would have filed the paperwork when we got to Vietnam. They take about 2 days to go over the paperwork, declare her/him an orphaned child, we go to court and so on. Now, we send in the I600 the US gov. then spends 60 days per child to perform this investigation and then we travel, go to court and so on.
So, it is obvious that we will now be in Italy for Christmas. Before we hoped to be in Vietnam around Christmas. Hopfully we will be in Vietnam around Jan. or Feb. We are not going to try to guess at a date because Los Ninos at this time, of course cannot guess at when the referrals we will come in consistantly.
Blessings,
Meg

Good News

I just received an email from the Italian Embassy in Hanoi that they will issue us a Shengen Visa for our little girl after all. I received word today that I will call my contact there and meet with her and she will let me know what to bring with me to the Consular's office. Thankfully the lady that I have been in contact with is the same lady that we will meet with when we get there so that there is no confusion. This means we will have a couple of months to come to Italy with her so that we can adjust to being a family and rest, then come to the US. This, of course also means no trip around the world for the two of us and that Mike and Willow will more likely be able to come to the US when we come to finish the paperwork.

SO>>>God is good all of the time, all of the time God is good......You know the song.

Blessings,
Meg