So we've been thrown for a loop! We've been spending the past month with our sights set on Bulgaria, but reading some posts in the Bulgaria Facebook group have led us to realize that the process is probably going to take MUCH longer than we had originally anticipated. We were expecting 2 years... 3 years max. But it will probably be a four year wait for our daughter in reality. And now I think... if the wait is that long, is it because so many are wanting to adopt these young girls? And if so, are we really doing good for the cause of orphans? Should we instead shift our sights towards a child who might be in more of need of a family?
Tomorrow has been on our calendar for so long as the day we would meet with our program director and sign all the papers we need to sign to officially become MLJ clients and go forward with Bulgaria. But without wanting to delay the process any longer than necessary if we do go with Bulgaria, it is really important that we take a step back to be sure we have ourselves in the right place. We want our plans to line up with God's desire for our child and our family.
Right now we are throwing two additional countries back into the mix for consideration. They are Samoa and Poland. It seems Poland *might* have a shorter wait time than Bulgaria, but it's not looking promising. Also, with Poland we would need to be in country for nearly a month (away from our boys) between the two trips, the costs would go up, and we'd need to work with an out-of-state agency (using MLJ for our home study). With Samoa we are really hopeful we might have found a good place, but it's a pilot program that is not Hague approved and carries a higher risk. We are also not sure how the medical requirements might go (with BJ's health conditions we are limited on the countries we can work with).
So, the meeting tomorrow is not going to be as we originally expected, but we are hoping to find some guidance and maybe even some answers!
Regardless, we are moving forward towards our daughter. The process is feeling very slow, but this is a very important step to take our time with!
