Yesterday was busy. Melissa sent out two packages, one to Chicago to begin the Visa process and another to USCIS to get our immigration paperwork updated.

Before the packages could be mailed out Melissa had to pick up Savannah from school, go to Walgreens to get a passport picture for Savannah, then pickup our updated homestudy in Rockford. This is a run-on sentence isn’t it. So at 4:59 I’m about ready to leave work and notice a missed call from Melissa’s cell phone and I’m thinking, she should be home by now, why didn’t she call from our Skype number?

So I left work and called her cell from the road and confirmed she was still on the road. We ended up eating out at our favorite buffet Ming Ten. Mmmm sushi and Chinese food. Gotta feed the stress.

We are getting closer, travel details are starting to come together. Prayers that we can pull this all together soon would be appreciated.

Mark

After four long years, we are finally going to get our baby girl—Jade. We finally know who our precious Jade is, and what she looks like, and (approximately) when we will travel to get her. We are hoping that by the end of this summer (2010) we will travel to China to get our daughter and bring her home. Our whole family will travel (Melissa, Mark and Savannah) and we will be updating this website while we are there. We will probably post some pictures to this blog, but most of them will go onto our photo album section (which you can access by clicking on the “Media Gallery” link on the right and choosing the link “Journey to Jade” and using the login and password that Mark and I have posted to our Facebook pages (this we will do a week or so before we leave). If you didn’t see it, you can also email us to ask for it through our “Email Us” button since we will be traveling with many gadgets that will allow us to get your email while we are away.

We look forward to posting again in the very near future.

Blessings,

The Elenbaas Family

Well, these last two months we have gotten word from our adoption agency that the wait time has increased (time from logged-in-date in China to Referral) one additional month. That means we are now at twenty months. If this time frame continued without lengthening further in the months between now and then, we would get a referral in April of 2008. However, we personally feel that if it gets much longer, we may not end up getting to travel until late 2008 because we feel in our hearts that China will not be granting adoption travel approval during or around the summer Olympic games to be held in Beijing in 2008.

Savannah will be starting Kindergarten in the Fall of 2008, which would make it a really dicey time to travel (as transition times are always hard for her). Another thing that is weighing on our minds is that we really would like to move to a certain area locally that has a high Asian percentage of children so Savannah would attend school with other children that she can feels at least look like her. (This is so important to us, as she already is saying things like “I don’t like my black hair.” at the age of four.) However, since our adoption funding is tied to the equity of our home we cannot move until we have completed our adoption.

We know that this is all in Gods hands and we trust him with it all. If you think of praying for us though, we’d certainly welcome your prayers. Thanks so much.

The wait time from log-in in China to Referral is now eighteen months. That would put us at a referral of February 2008 at this point. But we are not very confident that the wait time will remain the same the rest of this year.

One ray of hope is that some feel the new restrictions that start on May 1st of this year will greatly decrease the number of people applying for adoption to China. Also, I think a natural self-weeding out is taking place too, as not many people want to join a program that takes 18 months to get your child after the 3 to 6 months that you’ve already taken to get your paperwork ready.  On top of that, many who choose to adopt internationally have already dealt with infertility problems for years and it is hard to wait this much more time when there are other international programs that move much faster. So, all that to say, maybe the process will speed up?

The Chinese Adoption timeline right now from log-in to referral is now 17 months. If this timeline continues it would put us at a referral in January of 2008 (with travel possibly as late as March because of Chinese New Year Being on February 8th–which we cannot travel during because of the extreme busyness. It would be like traveling on Thanksgiving or Christmas in the U.S.).
Of course, things could change. The new regulations for adoptive parents have persuaded or forced many to consider other countries. Those new regulations go into effect May 1st of this year, so any not logged in by that date will have to meet the new regulations. This could cause a bit of a lull in the system and thus allow China Center for Adoption Affairs to be able to catch up a little on their back log–thus bring the timeframe back down a little. But of course, this is all speculation. We currently are just planning on not hearing anything until at least January 2008.