The Time Has Come for a Fresh Start!

Well, we did not wait until Friday. We did wait until we found out whether our paperwork was going to be submitted before it begins expiring. It is not. The paperwork I sent overnight mail last Tuesday to our agency's office in the U.S. has still not been sent along to Russia. Our agency explained their alternative plan to me (too much to bother explaining here) and we have decided we don't want to do it. So we have officially terminated our case with them.

As much as this is a loss, this is really a huge relief! We don't have to deal with the uncertainty of working with our agency anymore. We also don't have to worry about the particular region we were planning to adopt from, which just recently got a new government official who may make adoptions more difficult. These worries are no longer OUR worries.

So what's the plan? First, we are going to move forward with a home study update from our local social worker. This means we won't have to work with the home study agency anymore either, which has certainly been a source of stress. So this is the first good thing we get to do. Second, during that process (maybe a month? not sure) we will finalize whether we want to start a new Russian adoption or consider a domestic adoption. Both have their upsides and downsides. If we go with a Russian adoption, we will probably use an agency recently recommended by friends of ours. I have been in touch with the agency, and they are literally searching for families to adopt the children that they are ready to place. They recently had a family submit their documents, and the day after the documents were submitted in Russia they were given info about a child, followed by a trip to meet her two weeks later. Talk about running smoothly! So even if it takes us a month or two to put together new paperwork, we are still possibly in the game for a first trip by summer. We don't know as much about domestic options, but we will talk to our social worker about that to get more details. The timing is more uncertain in those cases since we would have to be selected by a birth mother from among other waiting families, and you can't predict when that will happen.

We are feeling optimistic that we are being led in a new direction. Having these frustrations behind us is a load off our minds and hearts. But your prayers for our next move are appreciated!