I want to thank all of you who helped out with the adoption process in Guatemala and made calls to your State Senators and Representative.
Guatemala 5000 Initiative
As of Monday, 70 members of the House of Representatives, and 28 members of the Senate had signed the Guatemala 5000 Initiative, asking Guatemala to allow in process adoptions to continue. This is wonderful!
Also, in response to all the calls and e-mails sent to government officials in Guatemala, President Berger announced his intention to allow all adoptions that are “in process” by December 31 to continue through to completion. While we are currently not sure what “in process” means, at least all the 4000+ Guatemalan children who have already been referred will be able to be adopted rather than be abandoned.
At this point, Wendy and I are going to continue forward with adopting from Guatemala, but will probably not have a referral by December 31 (unless there is a miracle, which we are praying for!). So we will probably have to adopt under the new procedures which will be enforced sometime in early 2008. We don’t yet know what these will be.
Hannah’s Hope Guatemala
The exciting news is that Hannah’s Hope Guatemala, which is the orphanage of All God’s Children International (our Adoption Agency), is currently going through the process of becoming accredited by the social service division of Guatemala. This is a new regulation for all homes that wish to be involved in the adoption process once the new law is final. The staff in Guatemala is doing everything necessary to be compliant with Hague and the new adoption law. If and when we begin to see changes with the adoption laws, they will be ready.
Update: Guatemala Adoptions officially closed, and as of October 2011, have still not reopened. Wendy and I stopped our adoption process, but we still pray for our little girl in Guatemala.
Hi there! I know y’all are probably wonderful people but I am not affiliated with Hannah’s Hope or All God’s Children and I do not know you or them, although I share your disappointment that you never got a referral (your agency should have told you that 1) things were moving fast to shut down adoptions at that time and you were unlikely to get a referral that would end with an adoption and 2) baby girls were almost always a long wait list and a boy– or “no preference”– would have cut your wait time and insured that you were in process before Berger and the US started enforcing the Hague in such a unilateral, blind, bad for everyone, way).
The picture of the little girl hugging the little boy is of my children, though. Although it was posted on their dad’s old website supporting adoptive parents and, afterwards, those children left behind with Do Good to feed Guatemalan children (Guatadopt, privately owned, now defunct, and yes! you *can* still donate to Guatemalan orphanages and I hope you are, even without the adoption incentive!) this photo is not part of the public domain and has not been licensed for general use. It was taken in my back yard in Wisconsin, not in Guatemala. My son was 18 mos (home for a year) and my daughter was 3 years (home for over 2 years). They in no way illustrate children from orphanages or children awaiting adoption since they were home for so long, although their foster families took extraordinarily good care of them while we waited. We still stay in touch with them.
If this picture is a testament of anything, it is the loving care their forever parents heaped on them (and our good fortune to have them as our own).
I know I am blessed with two beautiful children (now 16 and almost 18) but I would very much appreciate if you would remove their photos from this blog and anywhere else on this site that they appear. They are not State Orphans or models.
If you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, that’s just unreasonable! This post is 13 years old!” then think of how you would feel if you found your 3 bio daughters’ childhood photos being used on some random website without your knowledge. Adoptive mothers are no less mothers, adopted children are no less offspring. I don’t like to see my family photo on a site I’ve never heard of before today. It appeared first on a search so it doesn’t matter how old the post is: everyone sees it. It bothers me because I feel like it is used out of context, as well as our private life being turned into commercial use.
If they were Caesar I’d be okay with their faces appearing on coins and statues, or course. Maybe someday 😎
Thank you for understanding, and God Bless.