M has become very upset. He has decided he wants to pull out of the whole adoption process. He is currently not speaking to me. He thinks we are going to pay thousands of dollars to accept a referral and then several months later, after traveling, etc. we will lose the referral to a Russian family. This would put our time-frame in jeopardy. If we don’t bring home a child before June of next year when we move out of this state, we will not be adopting. M is afraid we will lose thousands of dollars for nothing. I am concerned too. There are already three referrals lost out of our small group of bloggers. It is not just happening here though. My Russian adoption email lists are starting to show more and more Russian relatives coming out of the woodwork when they hear an “Ugly” American is coming to take their child that they have abandoned to an orphanage for all this time.

We had a comment left for us recently from Caroline's agency that said if we switched over to their agency we could bring home our child by the end of June. M wanted to jump on this idea. However, I am concerned about doing that because of the huge extra cost of switching- and all of the additional time and paperwork to do this. More importantly; however, I was concerned because I felt initially, after taking the matter to prayer, that our current agency was the one we were supposed to go with. I don’t know what to do. I am just feeling discouraged. I am so sorry for the loss of all of your referrals. I don’t understand why the relatives aren’t informed and given the opportunity to take the child back before the referrals are issued. It just seems crazy.

Don’t worry though. We are not pulling out of the process. As long as I stay firm, we will keep going. I tell M to have faith and it will work out. Lately, my prayers have been: “Heavenly Father-Please don’t make me wrong.”

Labels: international adoption: worries