YEAH, We're Approved!!!

Finally on March 5th, 2007 we received our approval from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services that we were able to adopt and bring a foreign born infant into the US. This is a great milestone for us because now we can receive a referral of an orphan from Guatemala that we could potentially adopt. We fax the approval to the agency and wait for them to present an infant girl to us. The waiting is the hardest part. We have finished all of our paperwork to date and have sent our completed dossier (a stack of documents that are all notarized, State authenticated, and Consulate of Guatemala authenticated , along with photos of us, where we live and our family) to the agency and now we have to wait for our referral. There are rumors floating around that if you don't have your Power of Attorney (this is signed when accepting a referral and it gives the lawyer in Guatemala permission to act on our behalf) registered in the Guatemalan courts by April 1, 2007 you will not be able to proceed with an adoption from Guatemala. Of course panic sets in that by the time we get our referral and get our Power of Attorney completely authenticated and sent back to the agency who will in turn send it to Guatemala to be translated along with our dossier before it can be registered in family court we will most likely miss the deadline of April 1, 2007 and all of our efforts will have been in vain.
Well, fortunately for us we chose a very reputable agency with a very good standing in Guatemala. They keep us well informed about changes and we trust that they will not intentionally put us in bad situation. They announce that they are having a conference call March 29th to give us the facts about happenings in Guatemala and the US that may potentially affect adoptions. The Vice President of International Adoption with our agency spoke during the conference call to assure everyone that there are currently no deadlines in Guatemala that is just a rumor. He feels very confident that there will be no shut downs until probably 2008 when the US ratifies the Hague. Although he cannot guarantee this he feels very strongly that adoptions will be completed especially for those of us who are as far along in the process as we are. He has information from his sources at the US Department of State and in Guatemala that although things have slowed down somewhat they will continue. We are praying every day that things settle down in Guatemala so that our adoption will proceed quickly with fewer scares than we've had so far.