Hello all,
Here is another update on the status of U.S. adoptions from Vietnam. This article says it ALL...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_re_as/vietnam_us_adoption
Please PRAY for these little ones!!!
Hugs and love,
Robin and Brandon
Monday, April 28, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
What a day, what a week!
Hello all and HAPPY FRIDAY!!! :) I hope you all are doing well and enjoying this beautiful spring day! It's been absolutely GORGEOUS here in Indy!!! I can't get enough of this weather and the pretty flowers blooming everywhere you turn!!
So, first I will start with a RUSSIA update! We had a Russia conference call on Tuesday of this week with our Russia coordinator at FTIA, Inessa. It went very well. She was calling to go over how to complete our dossier...Well, she wasn't aware that I was still in a dossier FRENZY from just completing our Vietnam dossier (hehe). I'm an ole pro now ;-) Everytime she would say, "ok, so about this document"... I'd say, "done, done, done" :) Needless to say, I'm just about done with our dossier, the only thing left to do is our notaries and apostilles and then our I-600A specifically for Russia. She wanted me to wait until our home study was complete to get all of the above papers in order, so that the dates on the documentation is not far off. All of this to say, our home study should be completed along with all of our documentation (baring any unforeseen circumstances) in the next 4 weeks. At that point we are on the waiting list and our wait could be anywhere from a few days up to about 5 months. With that in mind...Many of the Russian adoptive families I have spoken with said they got their referrals as early as day THREE up to about 2 months!!!! So it could be much sooner than we anticipated. I'll keep ya posted! :) OHHHH, and we are thinking about a couple of new names....Hadley (the A sounds like the "apple") and also Carson, which is a family name on my side. We'll see...
On to Vietnam and the BIG NEWS there! I'm going to save the lengthy story and just post the warnings that were issued by our government, for you to read. It APPEARS that Vietnam is shutting down. For how long, we don't know and we also don't know if we'll be able to complete our adoption from Vietnam. Even with the recent announcement our agency issued a statement that sounded somewhat optimistic and they still believe there is a "chance" we could end up completing our adoption from Vietnam. As for any of the details, we truly have NO clue, which is par for the course on this journey. We continue to put our trust and faith in the Lord and His plan.
Here are both the relevant announcements and they are better than any synopsis I could give:
http://vietnam.usembassy.gov/adoption_warning0408.html
http://vietnam.usembassy.gov/irreg_adoptions042508.html
So, it's been a busy day and a busy week!! :) We are in very good spirits, though we were disappointed by the announcement we are at peace with where God has us right us now. Ironically today while I was out driving around I found COMPLETE comfort in listening to a sermon surrounding, Acts 20. God new just where to meet me, HE is SOO good!!!! :)
ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND!!! BIG HUGS FROM THE LEESE FAMILY!!!
Robin & Brandon
So, first I will start with a RUSSIA update! We had a Russia conference call on Tuesday of this week with our Russia coordinator at FTIA, Inessa. It went very well. She was calling to go over how to complete our dossier...Well, she wasn't aware that I was still in a dossier FRENZY from just completing our Vietnam dossier (hehe). I'm an ole pro now ;-) Everytime she would say, "ok, so about this document"... I'd say, "done, done, done" :) Needless to say, I'm just about done with our dossier, the only thing left to do is our notaries and apostilles and then our I-600A specifically for Russia. She wanted me to wait until our home study was complete to get all of the above papers in order, so that the dates on the documentation is not far off. All of this to say, our home study should be completed along with all of our documentation (baring any unforeseen circumstances) in the next 4 weeks. At that point we are on the waiting list and our wait could be anywhere from a few days up to about 5 months. With that in mind...Many of the Russian adoptive families I have spoken with said they got their referrals as early as day THREE up to about 2 months!!!! So it could be much sooner than we anticipated. I'll keep ya posted! :) OHHHH, and we are thinking about a couple of new names....Hadley (the A sounds like the "apple") and also Carson, which is a family name on my side. We'll see...
On to Vietnam and the BIG NEWS there! I'm going to save the lengthy story and just post the warnings that were issued by our government, for you to read. It APPEARS that Vietnam is shutting down. For how long, we don't know and we also don't know if we'll be able to complete our adoption from Vietnam. Even with the recent announcement our agency issued a statement that sounded somewhat optimistic and they still believe there is a "chance" we could end up completing our adoption from Vietnam. As for any of the details, we truly have NO clue, which is par for the course on this journey. We continue to put our trust and faith in the Lord and His plan.
Here are both the relevant announcements and they are better than any synopsis I could give:
http://vietnam.usembassy.gov/adoption_warning0408.html
http://vietnam.usembassy.gov/irreg_adoptions042508.html
So, it's been a busy day and a busy week!! :) We are in very good spirits, though we were disappointed by the announcement we are at peace with where God has us right us now. Ironically today while I was out driving around I found COMPLETE comfort in listening to a sermon surrounding, Acts 20. God new just where to meet me, HE is SOO good!!!! :)
ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND!!! BIG HUGS FROM THE LEESE FAMILY!!!
Robin & Brandon
Monday, April 14, 2008
Russian Approval and Vietnam Referrals
Hello friends and family! I hope you all have had a nice start to your week. We are doing well but busy bees. I wanted to give you a brief update and let you know that we received our "official" approval today from FTIA to start our Russian Adoption! Yippee! I can hardly believe we are heading down this path but we are so excited!
On the Vietnam front, there were three referrals last week (2 girls and 1 boy). Again as always the children were beyond precious. It was so nice to share in the joy of the families who got their referrals. It was a very exciting week for Vietnam families!! :)
Last but not least, I wanted to let you all know that rather than trying to maintain two blogs we are going to continue with this one blog. We will combine Russian and Vietnam updates as crazy at it may seem and as long as the posts might be, I think it will be easier for me to maintain with balancing work and compiling our dossier.
Thanks again to everyone for all of your support!!
We love you,
Robin & Brandon
On the Vietnam front, there were three referrals last week (2 girls and 1 boy). Again as always the children were beyond precious. It was so nice to share in the joy of the families who got their referrals. It was a very exciting week for Vietnam families!! :)
Last but not least, I wanted to let you all know that rather than trying to maintain two blogs we are going to continue with this one blog. We will combine Russian and Vietnam updates as crazy at it may seem and as long as the posts might be, I think it will be easier for me to maintain with balancing work and compiling our dossier.
Thanks again to everyone for all of your support!!
We love you,
Robin & Brandon
Thursday, April 10, 2008
BIG NEWS!!!!
Hello all!! :) Well, it's been a busy week thus far and we have some news to share with you!!! This is somewhat of a long story but I thought you might like to hear about the journey to our recent decision.
As you may remember, the week or two before Easter we were made aware of a potential domestic adoption possibility of a baby girl. Unfortunately, that didn't work out for us but it did get us thinking about how ready we are for our family and how open we truly are to other adoption alternatives that we hadn't considered. After that, we started discussing IF we should pursue a concurrent adoption (meaning another adoption while we are amidst our adoption for Vietnam). Neither one of us felt STRONGLY about it. We BOTH realized we were absolutely ready to be parents right now but didn't want to run with our emotion. We have been praying about it and doing lots of talking and thinking. All of this to say...We contacted our adoption agency about 2-3 wks ago to see what other alternatives we have and our facilitator asked us if we had ever considered Russia. I told her, "yes" but we decided against it for various reasons. After talking with her, I felt more at ease about our concerns and thought I'd share what she told me with Brandon. We talked and started to both feel our hearts "might" be open to this as an option. We gave it about a week and then contacted her again with some additional questions...This time I explained to her that we felt strongly about having a diverse family so that our children would never feel like they were "different" or didn't fit in with us (being Caucasian). In our eyes, the more diverse we are as a family, the less likely the child is to grow up truly looking at the physical differences. She then explained that in Russia there were many children close to the Kazakhstan and China borders that looked very Asian and were likely a mix of Russian and Chinese or Kazakh. This of course made both Brandon and I perk up!!! At that point she told us that we might want to talk to the Russian coordinator. So, I called her. She was very informative. I asked her what I thought would be the "tough question"...."Would we be able to request that our child was of Asian decent?" I thought for sure the answer would be NO, so I was prepared for that. Much to our pleasant surprise the answer was, "YES". Brandon and I perked up even more and started to feel the doors opening more and more. Our last concern was timeframe. We didn't want our children to come home too close in age and in time. We wanted to know that our children would both have a good amount of time to adjust. So, our final question early this week was..."How much longer till our daughter comes home from Vietnam (meaning our referal). The response was one that we both expected but neither Brandon nor I was quite ready to hear. We were just hoping that we might have our lil one home in summer- fall of 2009. We were told that we would likely not get our referral for 17 more months and then we would not travel for 5 months after that....22 MONTHS! I have to say that I think that was the toughest moment for me during this entire adoption process. Reality set in. We are 14 months into this process and 22 to go. That shouldn't have been a surprise because we new what to expect based on how upfront our agency has been but it still was tough. I called Brandon and was in tears, I told him about the 22 months and he said, "don't be sad Robin, I take this as good news...This tells us it's time to move forward". What an AMAZING husband I have!!! We've both been pretty level headed during this process but when I caved, he was there to make sense of it and pick me up!!! I hadn't thought of that.
We've made our decision, we are going to adopt from Russia!!!! We are both VERY excited!!!! We are going to continue on with our adoption from Vietnam (our hearts are still very much there) and in the interim, we will adopt a lil one from Russia. The other tid-bit that I left out is that if we decide to adopt a boy, the wait is 3 months and if we decide to adopt a girl it's 3-6 months!!!! This seemed incomprehensible based on our timeline from Vietnam. We haven't made a decision yet as to a boy or a girl. I'm wide open to either and have left it up to Brandon. He's saying..."60-40 for a girl" But we'll see! ;-) So, stay tuned. It's unbelievable to us that we will very likely have met or have our child home before Christmas!!!!!
The other thing that occurred to me today is that our child has already been born! In Russia, the youngest you are referred a child is 10-16 months, which means he or she could be 4-6 months right now! He/she is very likely living in an orphanage right now. We are asking that you PLEASE-PLEASE keep our lil one in your prayers. I was thinking today, who is holding him/her, feeding, loving, changing, etc. That's a tough reality to get your head around. There have been some other amazing ironies that have taken place during this time that I'd love to share but for fear that you all might be falling asleep already, I'll save those stories for another time.
Last but certainly not least...Our paperwork returned from the Vietnam Embassy yesterday and I immediately Fed Ex'd it to our agency. It is now going to be sent to Vietnam for translation and log in. Just when I thought the paper chase was coming to an end....It's time for me to get back in the saddle and hit the ground running again. Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork!!! :) But it's going to be worth every single minute of it!!!!
Everyone have a wonderful weekend!!! :) Sending big hugs your way!!!
Oh and P.S....Where else in the country can you live and have spring weather, daffodils blooming, green grass AND SNOW FLURRIES THIS WEEKEND!!!!!
As you may remember, the week or two before Easter we were made aware of a potential domestic adoption possibility of a baby girl. Unfortunately, that didn't work out for us but it did get us thinking about how ready we are for our family and how open we truly are to other adoption alternatives that we hadn't considered. After that, we started discussing IF we should pursue a concurrent adoption (meaning another adoption while we are amidst our adoption for Vietnam). Neither one of us felt STRONGLY about it. We BOTH realized we were absolutely ready to be parents right now but didn't want to run with our emotion. We have been praying about it and doing lots of talking and thinking. All of this to say...We contacted our adoption agency about 2-3 wks ago to see what other alternatives we have and our facilitator asked us if we had ever considered Russia. I told her, "yes" but we decided against it for various reasons. After talking with her, I felt more at ease about our concerns and thought I'd share what she told me with Brandon. We talked and started to both feel our hearts "might" be open to this as an option. We gave it about a week and then contacted her again with some additional questions...This time I explained to her that we felt strongly about having a diverse family so that our children would never feel like they were "different" or didn't fit in with us (being Caucasian). In our eyes, the more diverse we are as a family, the less likely the child is to grow up truly looking at the physical differences. She then explained that in Russia there were many children close to the Kazakhstan and China borders that looked very Asian and were likely a mix of Russian and Chinese or Kazakh. This of course made both Brandon and I perk up!!! At that point she told us that we might want to talk to the Russian coordinator. So, I called her. She was very informative. I asked her what I thought would be the "tough question"...."Would we be able to request that our child was of Asian decent?" I thought for sure the answer would be NO, so I was prepared for that. Much to our pleasant surprise the answer was, "YES". Brandon and I perked up even more and started to feel the doors opening more and more. Our last concern was timeframe. We didn't want our children to come home too close in age and in time. We wanted to know that our children would both have a good amount of time to adjust. So, our final question early this week was..."How much longer till our daughter comes home from Vietnam (meaning our referal). The response was one that we both expected but neither Brandon nor I was quite ready to hear. We were just hoping that we might have our lil one home in summer- fall of 2009. We were told that we would likely not get our referral for 17 more months and then we would not travel for 5 months after that....22 MONTHS! I have to say that I think that was the toughest moment for me during this entire adoption process. Reality set in. We are 14 months into this process and 22 to go. That shouldn't have been a surprise because we new what to expect based on how upfront our agency has been but it still was tough. I called Brandon and was in tears, I told him about the 22 months and he said, "don't be sad Robin, I take this as good news...This tells us it's time to move forward". What an AMAZING husband I have!!! We've both been pretty level headed during this process but when I caved, he was there to make sense of it and pick me up!!! I hadn't thought of that.
We've made our decision, we are going to adopt from Russia!!!! We are both VERY excited!!!! We are going to continue on with our adoption from Vietnam (our hearts are still very much there) and in the interim, we will adopt a lil one from Russia. The other tid-bit that I left out is that if we decide to adopt a boy, the wait is 3 months and if we decide to adopt a girl it's 3-6 months!!!! This seemed incomprehensible based on our timeline from Vietnam. We haven't made a decision yet as to a boy or a girl. I'm wide open to either and have left it up to Brandon. He's saying..."60-40 for a girl" But we'll see! ;-) So, stay tuned. It's unbelievable to us that we will very likely have met or have our child home before Christmas!!!!!
The other thing that occurred to me today is that our child has already been born! In Russia, the youngest you are referred a child is 10-16 months, which means he or she could be 4-6 months right now! He/she is very likely living in an orphanage right now. We are asking that you PLEASE-PLEASE keep our lil one in your prayers. I was thinking today, who is holding him/her, feeding, loving, changing, etc. That's a tough reality to get your head around. There have been some other amazing ironies that have taken place during this time that I'd love to share but for fear that you all might be falling asleep already, I'll save those stories for another time.
Last but certainly not least...Our paperwork returned from the Vietnam Embassy yesterday and I immediately Fed Ex'd it to our agency. It is now going to be sent to Vietnam for translation and log in. Just when I thought the paper chase was coming to an end....It's time for me to get back in the saddle and hit the ground running again. Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork!!! :) But it's going to be worth every single minute of it!!!!
Everyone have a wonderful weekend!!! :) Sending big hugs your way!!!
Oh and P.S....Where else in the country can you live and have spring weather, daffodils blooming, green grass AND SNOW FLURRIES THIS WEEKEND!!!!!
Sunday, April 6, 2008
The paper chase!
Hello all! :) Well, I'm happy to report that we are seeing signs of BEAUTIFUL spring here in Indy!!! The daffodils are peaking out of the ground along with the beginning of our tulips!!! It's so exciting to see GREEN!!! I absolutely LOVE this time of year here. There are so many amazing flowers. Of course, with spring comes the desire for home improvements! About two months ago, "B" and I ordered a new family room (couch, tables, etc) and so over last weekend I decided we should paint before the furniture arrives. The family room looked so nice after painting, it turned into the hallway, and next thing we knew it...Our bedroom :) I was on a mission. I'm really excited it turned out nicely and just in time for my sisters to arrive in two weeks. I can't wait to see them!
Ok, so on to the latest information and boy is there plenty. As you may remember about 2 weeks ago we were told to begin our dossier. Well, the message was very clear that we would need to do it FAST. The message from our agency was..."As fast as possible". So, needless to say I was in overdrive running around like a loony. We had to get our criminal reports, medical records, home study, I-171, reference letters, etc, etc. In the adoption world they call this the, "paper chase". I got a first hand example as to why it is called that!!! WOW!!! Talk about busy!! After we gathered out documents we took them to get them notarized and then down to the Secretary of State in Indianapolis. Now they are at the Vietnam Embassy (via RUSH mode) and will return to us, all to get to our agency ASAP where they will then be reviewed and sent on to Vietnam for translation and log in of our DOSSIER. All of this is important because we still do not know what the true outcome will be regarding Vietnam closing come Sept 1st. There has been no more news on that front but many are speculating based on all of the rushing around we are doing. If we can get logged in to Vietnam before the POTENTIAL shutdown, we have been told there is a good possibility we could continue our adoption. So we are praying for that and for God to direct all of our steps. We hope to have our paperwork back from the Embassy sometime this week and then we will be overnighting them to our agency (FTIA).
Next bit of news....USCIS has issued an "UNOFFICIAL" statement saying that all children in Vietnam who are relinquished (turned over for adoption, NOT abandoned) will require DNA testing. This opens an entirely new set of concerns. As I'm sure you can imagine, Vietnam has a much different culture than the U.S. and there is a HUGE stigma to surrendering your child, especially if you are an unwed birth mother. There are many concerns about this and how it will affect relinquishing children but to be honest, I just can't think about it or be concerned. I am doing my best to keep my eyes FIXED on God and His plan for us. It's the only thing that gives me peace. There are SOOO many unknowns in International adoption, you could "WHAT IF" this to absolute death...We just chose not to. I have actually removed myself from all but one of our support groups because of all of the negativity. I feel like we have our own support group, in each other (Brandon and I) are friends, family, agency and adoptive parents we have gotten to know personally.
Now for the good news!! :) Our agencies update this week was positive once again and they have said that amidst all the changes and uncertainty they continue to process adoptions and move forward. More children have been matched with families and more referrals will be coming soon (yayyy!!!). That means we are likely still on target for our referral sometime in April-August 2009. Of course, we'll continue to keep you posted.
Last, we ask for prayers for the little girl (birth mom) soon to give birth to her baby girl. We don't believe that we will have the opportunity to adopt this baby girl but we still ask for prayers for her and her mom. She is going through what must be the most DIFFICULT BY FAR, time in her life!! Also, Brandon and I have been throwing around a potential concurrent adoption as well. This means we could possibly adopt another child domestically or Internationally while we wait for our lil girl to come home from Vietnam. We have been talking and praying about this for a few weeks now but we haven't felt God pulling us to take ACTION, so we are waiting and attempting to be patient. While we consider options we ask for prayer for God to open and close doors along this road and direct our paths and make them crystal clear. We don't want to live out OUR plan we want to live out HIS plan.
We hope this finds everyone doing well!!! We miss and love you all!!! Anyone who wants to venture up to Indy during this gorgeous spring weather, our doors are open and you are more than welcome!!! :)
PS- MANY HUGE THANKS to The Andries, The Sampens, The Beasley's, The Luedtke's and my family for TRULY helping us get our paperwork submitted TIMELY!!!! You all don't know how much your help meant to us!!! We COULDN'T have moved as quickly as we did without you ALL!!!!
BIG HUGE HUGS!!!! xoxo
Robin & Brandon
Ok, so on to the latest information and boy is there plenty. As you may remember about 2 weeks ago we were told to begin our dossier. Well, the message was very clear that we would need to do it FAST. The message from our agency was..."As fast as possible". So, needless to say I was in overdrive running around like a loony. We had to get our criminal reports, medical records, home study, I-171, reference letters, etc, etc. In the adoption world they call this the, "paper chase". I got a first hand example as to why it is called that!!! WOW!!! Talk about busy!! After we gathered out documents we took them to get them notarized and then down to the Secretary of State in Indianapolis. Now they are at the Vietnam Embassy (via RUSH mode) and will return to us, all to get to our agency ASAP where they will then be reviewed and sent on to Vietnam for translation and log in of our DOSSIER. All of this is important because we still do not know what the true outcome will be regarding Vietnam closing come Sept 1st. There has been no more news on that front but many are speculating based on all of the rushing around we are doing. If we can get logged in to Vietnam before the POTENTIAL shutdown, we have been told there is a good possibility we could continue our adoption. So we are praying for that and for God to direct all of our steps. We hope to have our paperwork back from the Embassy sometime this week and then we will be overnighting them to our agency (FTIA).
Next bit of news....USCIS has issued an "UNOFFICIAL" statement saying that all children in Vietnam who are relinquished (turned over for adoption, NOT abandoned) will require DNA testing. This opens an entirely new set of concerns. As I'm sure you can imagine, Vietnam has a much different culture than the U.S. and there is a HUGE stigma to surrendering your child, especially if you are an unwed birth mother. There are many concerns about this and how it will affect relinquishing children but to be honest, I just can't think about it or be concerned. I am doing my best to keep my eyes FIXED on God and His plan for us. It's the only thing that gives me peace. There are SOOO many unknowns in International adoption, you could "WHAT IF" this to absolute death...We just chose not to. I have actually removed myself from all but one of our support groups because of all of the negativity. I feel like we have our own support group, in each other (Brandon and I) are friends, family, agency and adoptive parents we have gotten to know personally.
Now for the good news!! :) Our agencies update this week was positive once again and they have said that amidst all the changes and uncertainty they continue to process adoptions and move forward. More children have been matched with families and more referrals will be coming soon (yayyy!!!). That means we are likely still on target for our referral sometime in April-August 2009. Of course, we'll continue to keep you posted.
Last, we ask for prayers for the little girl (birth mom) soon to give birth to her baby girl. We don't believe that we will have the opportunity to adopt this baby girl but we still ask for prayers for her and her mom. She is going through what must be the most DIFFICULT BY FAR, time in her life!! Also, Brandon and I have been throwing around a potential concurrent adoption as well. This means we could possibly adopt another child domestically or Internationally while we wait for our lil girl to come home from Vietnam. We have been talking and praying about this for a few weeks now but we haven't felt God pulling us to take ACTION, so we are waiting and attempting to be patient. While we consider options we ask for prayer for God to open and close doors along this road and direct our paths and make them crystal clear. We don't want to live out OUR plan we want to live out HIS plan.
We hope this finds everyone doing well!!! We miss and love you all!!! Anyone who wants to venture up to Indy during this gorgeous spring weather, our doors are open and you are more than welcome!!! :)
PS- MANY HUGE THANKS to The Andries, The Sampens, The Beasley's, The Luedtke's and my family for TRULY helping us get our paperwork submitted TIMELY!!!! You all don't know how much your help meant to us!!! We COULDN'T have moved as quickly as we did without you ALL!!!!
BIG HUGE HUGS!!!! xoxo
Robin & Brandon
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