Is there hope???

This past week we finally got some news about Honduras. The investigation has been concluded. They have a new director of IHNFA now, attorney Felipe Antonio Morales. This was confirmed by Gladney. They also have said that the adoption commitee will meet in mid- February to match children and approve dossiers. This is great news! I hope it is true. FYI...we do not expect to get matched with a child yet. We hope, with all our hearts, to be assigned a waitlist number. There are many families with a number who have not been matched yet. Families who have been on the waitlist for well over a year. I was about to give up on Honduras, but it looks like things may be taking off again. I hope the new director will straighten out the system and start matching these precious children with the families who can't wait to love them.
I am trying not to get my hopes up, but this is very promising news! Z asks everyday when we're are going to get her little brother. She listens to my heart and says she can hear him. Please, God, help me be patient.

Frustration

Z's bloodwork, fecal tests and urinalysis came back normal and was sent to Gladney to be apostilled this past week. Thursday there were numerous articles in Honduran newspapers about an intervention in the Adoption Department of IHNFA by the government due to "irregularities." I don't know what type of irregularities they are referring to. Gladney says that the Adoption Department is still processing cases, so I have no ideas what's going on. I hope it doesn't mean that someone will be taking over and going over all the dossiers there. That would take an eternity!

It seems like it's just one thing after another. I know of 31 other families from different parts of the world that are in some stage of the Honduran adoption process. There are families that have been on the waiting list for over a year. We are not even ON the waiting list yet. We are not ever officially approved, and our dossier has been there since July. We have sent the psychological addendum and now the labwork for Z. I cannot think of another thing that they could want from us. They know more about us than we know about ourselves!

It won't be long before we have to start re-doing documents. For a country that supposedly became more "adoption friendly" Honduras is very demanding. Z's adoption was a cakewalk compared to this. We were very lucky.

I have given up on the idea of having a number on the waitlist by Christmas. It's all very discouraging. This will be the first Christmas without my Mom, and I so wanted some good news!

Poor Little Z!

Gladney called an important teleconference last week to inform all families adopting from Honduras that our children at home need to have lab work, fecal smears, and a urinalysis. This did not come as a surprise, since all the other agencies require it and it is on INHFA's website (although it uses the word "biological" children). There is one family I know of that only needed tests for their bio children and not for their adopted children. Internationally adopted children are already tested for all that stuff anyway. Our daughter had all kinds of blood tests done in her birth country and again when she got here. I tried to get out of it, but we had to just do it. INHFA did not specify which tests they need, so we are going to do all of them so that we are not held up again or have to go back to the doctor for more bloodwork.

I told Z about what the doctor would do. She thought it was hilarious that the doctor wanted to check her pee-pee and poop, but the blood was not so funny. We had a CBC, Hep, HIV and syphilis. Poor Little Z was so scared. I told her how brave she was and promised her we could pick out whatever she wanted at the store afterward. I only told her later what the testing was for. She is proud of herself that she did it for her baby brother's adoption. She asks everyday when he is coming. She can't wait to be a big sister.

Other families have said they had to get a TB skin test for their kids as well, so we will go to the health center today for that. I also have the fecal smear kit here at home and really look forward to that part! I hope she doesn't have to go #2 at school today. This will all probably take at least a week to get to Gladney, then apostilled, translated, etc. in Honduras.
Will the paperwork never end? I'm trying to roll with the punches, but I am so frustrated sometimes. Meanwhile other paperwork is expiring. Our home study is only good for 15 months and our fingerprints for 18 months. Before we know it, we will be having to update everything! I hope and pray that INHFA will accept us soon, and give us a number on the coveted wait list. I also pray for patience.

Hopeful....

We had a webinair on Thursday with Gladney. They said there are basically 2 phases of approval. The first is by the adoption department of INHFA. It takes 8-10 weeks for approval. That is the phase that we are in right now. The second phase is to get it signed-off by the Secretary General (?) This was the position that is now filled by an interim secretary. Gladney said that the interim secretary does have the power to sign off on the adoptions. Things are actually moving more quickly, but they have dossiers that arrived there back in May, supposedly.

This is good news. This means that we don't have to wait for INHFA to hire a new person to fill this position. Our dossier arrived in Honduras on July 21st and our psychological addendum arrived sometime in September. Our case worker said it was presented to INHFA's adoption department sometime last week.

It looks like families in country now are still finalizing their adoptions, according to some blogs I read. I'm just so thankful that things are still moving along. Thanks for your support.

Waiting and waiting...

So our dossier has been in Honduras for a long while now. Gladney did ask all families for an addendum on our psychological report. Shortly after sending that to Gladney, we got some confusing news. Several important people at INHFA were dismissed. They are now "re-structuring". Some say this is a good thing, some say it is not and will delay adoptions indefinitely. What we do know, is that the adoption department in Honduras is approving dossiers, but there is no one to sign off on them, so that families can get on the wait list. Our dossier should be presented at anytime now, but once it's approved we will not be able to move forward until they hire the new person for this post.
It feels a lot like what happened with our Ethiopia experience. Once all the paperwork was done, we got the bad news that Ethiopia was practically coming to a halt with international adoption. The timing stinks.
I'm hoping that the Honduran government will quickly fill this position with a competent person who really cares about this children, so that adoptions can start up again.
It's been a year since we started this process. I am trying so hard to be patient. Everyday my daughter asks me when the baby's coming. Especially recently, since my brother's daughter was born last week.
It seems like it's taking forever. I'm trying to remember what a wise adoptive mother and friend told me when we were adopting our daughter and our dossier was sent to the Chinese consulate instead of the Vietnamese Consulate by the courier. She said that my baby was not ready yet. All of this government and political stuff is out of my hands. I cannot control this.
God, please help me to be patient.

Dossier in Honduras!

Yesterday I received an e-mail from Gladney, saying that our dossier arrived safely in Honduras and is the hands of the attorney, Cesar. I guess he will have it translated into Spanish and have it authenticated by the Honduran government. Then, once presented to INHFA, it will take another couple of months to be approved. I hope they will not ask for more information or updated documents. Once approved, we will be officially on the waiting list for Samuel. I am thinking of a middle name for him. The name that comes to my mind these days is my uncle's name Paul.

The name Samuel came to me during the little show that my daughter did after Vacation Bible School at our church. They were talking about the story of Hannah. I'd forgotten about Hannah's story. She wanted a baby very much, but she could not have one. She prayed to God for a baby and became pregnant. She named the baby Samuel, which means "God heard" or "requested of God" or "God's heart". Hannah gave Samuel to the temple, where he became an important prophet. Alejandro and I agreed that this is a perfect name for our future son, because of everything that has happened in our lives the last 8 years. Our Samuel will grow up in our wonderful church. Our church is the only reason we are able to adopt again, thanks to some wonderfully generous people. Our son will be a gift from God. The name Samuel also sounds really nice in Spanish!

First post!

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Melissa Montes. I have been married for 15 years to Alejandro, who is from Spain. We have 1 daughter who we adopted from Vietnam in 2007. She is now 4 years old and a blessing. We are so privileged to be her parents.

We also are parents of an angel baby, who was born still in February of 2011.

We are fortunate to be able to begin a second adoption, this time from Honduras. We were originally considering a domestic adoption, but decided against it for many reasons. We began the adoption process in the Ethiopia program last October. Around the time our dossier was almost complete, except for our Immigration approval letter (the 171H) The U.S. Department of State issued a warning of major delays in the Ethiopia program, because of corruption in-country. Since we saw this happen in Vietnam, after we adopted our daughter, we decided to change countries. There are still 16 legitimate orphans in Vietnam who are matched with U.S. families who cannot come home, caught in the middle of bureacratic limbo for the last 3 years, which was when the country closed to U.S. adoptions. We were one of the lucky ones.

When the news was announced about the Ethiopia program, our agency announced they were starting a pilot program in Honduras. We decided that would be perfect for us, especially
because we both speak Spanish and Tegucigalpa is just a 3 hour flight from Atlanta. I am a Flight Attendant for Delta, and we have daily flights. there.

Honduras requires many other documents for the dossier than we had for Ethiopia, so we had to do a lot of the paperwork over. We had to update our Home Study and send it to USCIS again, along with a change of country request. A 2-hour personality test is also required. It took a few months to get all of this together. We just received our USCIS approval letter last week. We had been waiting since March 9th.

Now that all the paperwork is done on my part (I hope!) I have decided to start this blog. My agency says once the dossier is submitted, it will need to be translated and accepted by INHFA (in Honduras), who will accept it or ask for more information. Once we are accepted by INHFA, we will wait 6-12 months to be matched. We are requesting a boy up to 18 months at the time of referral. Honduras requires 2 trips with a few months in between. By the time the baby comes home, he could be 1 year or 2 years old.

We are very excited, but ready for a long wait and perhaps more paperwork and interviews, etc. The baby's name will be Samuel, but that is another post in itself....