Home Study Approved!

Our social worker let us know that she received approval for our home study from DCFS today, so now it's off to USCIS. We are excited to have made some progress, but we are thinking and praying hard about whether or not to stay with Vietnam.

Home Study Sent to DCFS

Our social worker told us that she is sending our home study to DCFS today. This process will take several weeks, after which the home study then goes to USCIS. We should have approval within the next couple of months. By March we should know more about the future of adoptions in Vietnam.

Our First Tet Celebration

Our friends Blake and Sue had us over to celebrate Tet. Blake and Sue cooked several delicious Vietnamese dishes. We had banh chung (sticky rice cakes), tomato egg drop soup, and pork riblets in caramel sauce. We brought a Vietnamese banana cake for dessert. The food was great, and we enjoyed hanging out with Blake & Sue (and Elijah loved playing the game cube they have!).

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới

That's Happy New Year in Vietnamese! Today marks the beginning of Tet, which is the New Year's celebration in Vietnam that lasts for about a week. We are looking forward to learning more about this celebration. Today begins the year of the rat.

Unknowns in Vietnam

Today the U.S. Department of State made an announcement warning prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) about the uncertain future of Vietnam adoptions. The statement below was posted on Ethica's website, and they do a great job of explaining the current situation in Vietnam if you are interested in learning more. You can also read the warning statement from the Department of State's website. We are really struggling with what to do at this time. We feel really invested in Vietnam already, and we hope and pray that the MOU is resigned. We'll keep you updated on anything we learn.

USDOS Announces Advisory and FAQ on Vietnamese Adoptions
The U.S. Department of State(DOS) has issued the following statement about adoptions from Vietnam.

http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/intercountry/intercountry_3939.html

At meetings with adoption service providers attended by Ethica personnel, DOS has noted that approximately 2000 people have indicated to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that they intend to adopt from Vietnam. Many agencies have stopped adding people to their waiting lists, but the lists are long—with many agencies reporting waits of 12-15 months to 2 years for a referral. In light of the long wait times, and the significant number of people in process, the Department felt it was wise to inform people who have not already begun an adoption from Vietnam that it was possible that a new Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) will not be concluded by the Sept. 1 deadline and that when a new MOU is concluded, it might be different from the one currently in place.

The U.S. does not require an MOU; the Vietnamese government does. Thus, while the U.S. will certainly continue its processing past Sept. 1, 2008, it is impossible to predict what the Vietnamese government will do with cases in process when the MOU expires. Because it is impossible to predict, it is the responsible thing to do for the Department to make families aware of the possibility that cases not completed by September 1, 2008 could face significant delays. Families should be aware that no agency can promise you that you will receive a referral after September 1 (as some families have reported), or that a case in process is guaranteed to be completed.

Additional information on this situation can be found here:
http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/intercountry/intercountry_3940.html

Home Study Visit

After no progress for some time, we are moving in the right direction again! We had our home study visit with our new home study agency today. Since it's just an update, we'll only need to have one visit. It went well, and we are happy to be moving forward. Our social worker gave us the following timeline: Home study sent to immigration in 2-3 weeks. Then about 4-6 weeks to get our approval from USCIS. So this will take us to March, which is a key month in the Vietnam adoption community. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which is the agreement between Vietnam and the US is due for renewal in September. Apparently we should know by March if the two countries are going to be renewing the MOU. Please pray with us that this will happen. We're waiting to choose a placing agency after we see what happens in March.

New agency

I haven't updated this blog in a while, so I'll give a quick update. We decided to switch agencies since the process had stopped at the other agency. We sent our home study and all of our paperwork to a new home study agency last week. We have some paperwork to fill out for the new agency, and then we'll have to do one home visit. Hopefully this home study process will go much more quickly since we've already gotten background checks done, etc. We should be able to reuse most of what we have from our previous home study. So hopefully after the holidays things will start moving again.