Adoption Update

Been a while since I updated, so here we go. Studly received an email on Saturday from a lady who said she was a friend of Gertrudes. Gertrude is the head of the orphanage in Haiti. Anyway, this lady volunteers for HealingHaiti and said she could help in the process of adopting Alvarez. Now, as a refresher, Alvarez is the original baby that drew us to consider Haiti. We had been told that we couldn't be guaranteed Alvarez because of the waiting list and so on. We were also told by the adoption agency that they don't have an official working relationship with Gertrudes orphanage. So, all of this is confusing, and I hope you are following me. But, in just reading this, you can see why Tom and I have not sent in the official application yet. We are dealing with the Haitian government here and we want to make sure everything is legit before we start sending money and applications down there. In a nut shell, this is what we found out tonight. Up to this point, Gertrude has been doing private adoptions only. Apparently, there are many people who are pushing for her to change that and place the children with an agency. She has not decided what she wants to do yet. This woman who emailed us is going down to visit Gertrude at the end of this month and will have an answer when she gets back. So, this is where we are at. If we want Alvarez, we have to wait a few more weeks for Gertrude to decide what she is going to do. If she wants to do private adoption only, then we wait until Alvarez is declared eligible for adoption, and then we adopt him from her. If she decides to place him with an agency, we roll the dice and see if we get him. If we don't care which child we get, then we go ahead and send in the application and $200. At this point, we have decided to wait and see what Gertrude decides. We really feel as though Alvarez is who drew us to Haiti in the first place, we want to see if we can adopt him. Waiting a few weeks is not going to kill me. It's driving me nuts, but it won't kill me. so, there you have it! Our adoption update!


chrissy