Possible Delays!

I was hesitant to post this information, but after thinking about it, I figured that it would be helpful to have many of you praying for the situation.

I talked to our agency a few nights ago, and they told us that they are concerned about the possibility of major delays in the adoption process from Burundi.  They think they are being told that the agency's paperwork (and permission to process adoptions in Burundi) is too "old."  Burundi is realizing that they are going to have many people requesting adoptions now, and they need to really think through how they are going to process them all, and what documents they are going to require.  This may mean that they will require our agency to resubmit their paperwork.  And it may also mean that our paperwork requirements may change.  (Hopefully they will relax some of the requirements!  But who knows?)  This is part of package of choosing to be in a "pioneer" program.  Not everything has been worked out yet.

If our agency has to resubmit paperwork, if could take another 6+ months before they are ready for us to continue our process, and submit our dossier.  Or... it could take only a month, and we could just continue on.

Where are we in the process now?  We are close to having all our documents gathered for our dossier.  We do, however, still have to go through the process of authenticating all our documents (getting them stamped with official-looking seals) before all of it can be sent over to Burundi.  We also need to have a child chosen before we send our documents in.  This was supposed to happen soon, and we were praying for it to happen by the end of this month.

Now, it may be a while.  In fact, there are two children in Burundi in the agency's care right now that must be adopted first before they can take on care of more children.  We are not sure that we are ready to parent either of these two "older" children.  What that seems to mean for us, is that someone else in the Burundi program, possibly someone who entered the program after us, will be the first ones to go to Burundi to pick up the first two children.  We must wait until they go through the process and get back before we can even start up our process again, and find a younger child ready to be adopted.

When will that be?  We don't know.  In fact these are mostly conclusions based on what our agency has told us.  What we do know is that our agency told us to wait another week or two until they find out more information.  They will be getting back to us then to let us know what is happening.

What does that mean for YOU?  Please pray for us!  You have a week and half (at least) before we hear something again.

-You can pray for the whole process to work itself out according to God's will.
-You can pray for the Burundi government to move quickly through the decision process to be ready for adoptions to start happening.
-You can pray for a wise counselor in the government to help move things along, and who has a heart for orphans.
-You can pray for the mail to move quickly if our agency has to resubmit some paperwork.
-You can pray that a restructuring of Burundi's adoption process will make it easier for even more orphans to be adopted.
-You can pray for clear communication between the government and our agency's contact in Burundi.
-You can even pray for someone to be hired in the country to take on care of more orphans.
-You can pray for patience for us.
-You can pray for wisdom for us to know what to do, and if we need to change directions or start something new.

Will you join us in prayer?  This situation is all for a reason, and God's purpose in it is higher than we can imagine.  Where is God taking us on this journey?  I don't know.  But we know that we CAN TRUST HIM.

Thanks, and we will let you know as soon as we know something more.