Tegu blocks

I came across a business named "Tegu".  For people who do not know, "Tegu" is the nickname for Honduras' capitol city, Tegucigalpa.  You can see why it needs a nickname! (I have also seen "Tegus and Teguc). Tegu creates toy building blocks that are magnetic, which are created from hardwood in Honduras.  It seems like a great company...they are "a toy business founded to address unemployment, neglected natural and human resources, and the need for entrepreneurship in Honduras."  They are made in Honduras and employs Hondurans to create these blocks, thus giving jobs to those who would most likely not have one.  So basically, if you buy a set of their blocks you are giving money to Honduras.

An awesome thing that Tegu does is sell "days of school" so kids can go to school, as well as sell "trees" which gives money so that Tegu can plant new trees in areas of Honduras where forest has been clear-cutted.  You can purchase 12 dozen trees for $20 and one month of school for $60.  The block sets are fairly pricey but when you stop and think about what its for I think it's worth it.

I have not purchased any yet, but will be doing so for Christmas gifts.  Even if people do not purchase anything from Tegu, I urge you to pass along the company's website to others.  Here it is: Tegu blocks.  They also have a Facebook page: TeguToys.

As far as we are concerned, I am expecting to receive an email from Beth sometime this week saying that our dossier is being presented to IHNFA.  Our new psych eval was delivered to Gladney today so hopefully that will be on its way to Honduras very soon for translation, authentication and finally at IHNFA. Cross your fingers that they won't request anything additional and we can just fly through IHNFA!

Once we have been approved by them, our dossier goes to the desk of the Secretary General who signs it and then we will be on the national waitlist for a referral.  We expect that wait to take about 12 months, if not a bit longer, especially since we are wanting a baby girl.  Hopefully it won't take that long, and our agency is quoting a wait time of 6-12 months for a referral once we have been approved by IHNFA.  We are planning on it taking a minimum of one year and hope that we are pleasantly surprised with the referral of our daughter sooner.  Once we receive it accept it, we will travel for a week to Honduras for interviews, psych evals (yes more of that!!), and most importantly to meet our daughter.  We will then have to leave WITHOUT her, and then travel for one last time approximately 3-5 months later and stay for a minimum of 30 days and then we will finalize the adoption, have doctors appointments for her to have immunizations before leaving the country, get her new birth certificate and visa, and who knows what else!  We really wish that we had the option of doing one long trip of 6 weeks so that we don't have to leave our daughter.  Also, I know I will be petrified the whole time between trips that something will happen to severely delay our second trip, or that the country will close and we won't be able to go get her and bring her home.

The woman that I wrote about in a previous entry who was in Honduras to adopt her son, FINALLY signed the paperwork and I believe they left Honduras yesterday!  I am sooooo happy for her!!

Well, this entry ended up being way more wordy than I expected!

Next week!

I received an update from Beth yesterday and our dossier will be presented to IHNFA within the next week!!  They are not going to wait until our new eval is with the rest of our dossier like I was originally told.  So exciting!!!  It will take IHFNA 8-10 weeks to review our dossier and then we'll hear if we are approved (please yes!) or need to provide additional information, which is most likely to happen, given IHNFA's history with the other dossiers.  It's at this point where the serious waiting begins.  The wondering....could we pass through without needing anything else?  If not, what else will they want?  How long will this process really take? Will there be a new director by the time our dossier is approved?  Will this new person streamline things and make it a quicker process than it is currently, which could lead to referrals on a regular basis? What number will we be on the list?  How long for a referral, until travel?  So many unknowns from this point forward.  Up until now, we had some control over things and now?  It's all up to a foreign country which is still very new to adoptions and there have been speed bumps along the way for those families ahead of us.  It leaves me wondering what speed bumps will affect us.

Things do appear to have sped up a bit in regards to when dossiers are submitted to Honduras.  I know of some families that submitted theirs in July and are just now getting word that they were presented, or will be presented to IHNFA soon.  Our dossier arrived on September 23rd and we are being told the same thing.  So this is good news for families behind us as well.

I have read some disheartening news on a woman's adoption blog that I follow.  She is in Honduras right now and was supposed to sign her adoption decree yesterday to complete the adoption.  The meeting for that never happened because the person who is authorized to sign such paperwork was away.  I guess there is a holiday there on Monday, so her lawyer is saying that MAYBE on Tuesday they will sign, but there is no official appointment.  She said that she is going to be there indefinitely now and at some point she may have to leave Honduras so her daughter's schooling isn't affected.  I was so sad to read this, and I hope she can get that signature soon.  Once that is done, she will need to have her son get vaccinations, a new birth certificate, apply for his visa so there is still a lot left to do. I hope that this all over soon and she can get her children home, where they belong!

Upated evals done!

Dave and I met with our psychologist on Friday, September 23th so that we could get the updated evals completed with IHNFA's new requirements.  He said that he would have it rewritten within two weeks, which was Friday, October 7th.  For our first report, he was slow in getting it written and I had to keep on him to get it done in a timely manner.  I knew that this second time would be no different - and I was right!  I emailed him three times...he said he never received the first two emails, but did answer the third once I had to be firm with him. Beth said the report he wrote is excellent, and we're hoping that IHNFA feels the same way!

We finally have our newest psych evals completed, reviewed by Beth and is back in the hands of our psychologist to finalize it as of today, almost a week later than the psychologist promised.  The first one was 5 pages, and this is eight pages! I will pick it up at his office on Tuesday, and my plan is to Fedex it to our Secretary of State for it to apostilled, and then down to Gladney so they can submit it to Honduras.  It then will need to go through translation and authentication, just like our dossier.  Our dossier will not be presented to IHFNA until our new psych eval has gone through those steps.  We really hope that this eval satisfies IHNFA so that we don't have to go through this a third time and hold everything up more.

If IHNFA still isn't sure about us being fit parents with this report and the rest of our dossier then I just won't know what to think!  I understand that it is their job to place children in safe and healthy homes and I respect that.  And then we will need to go through interviews and more psych evals during our first trip to Honduras!

Some of the families that I am in contact with have said that their dossiers were recently submitted to IHNFA, or will be very soon, so that is very exciting!  Hopefully ours will be presented in the next few weeks once our new psych eval is with our dossier!  There will be several of us with dossiers at about the same stage down there!  I'm looking forward to hearing about their experiences as they go through IHNFA!

Translation complete!

Five minutes after I wrote my latest blog entry and mentioned that I wasn't expecting to hear anything in regards to dossier updates for a few weeks I received an email from Beth!

Our dossier has been translated....it only took TWO weeks -  and next week will be in the hands of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who checks the apostilles and "legalizes" everything.  This process takes about 5 days, and then it will be formally presented to IHNFA.  So, we anticipate our dossier to be in IHNFA's hands in less than two weeks!  Yay!!!!!

Also, Beth says that they expect the two dossiers to be signed by the interim Secretary General and placed on the national waitlist next week!

IHNFA updates

I wrote earlier about how the Secretary General and a few others were fired from IHNFA.  There are now interim people in those positions while an investigation is underway.  There have been conflicting reports from various sources about what is happening in regards to the adoption services right now.  Gladney sent an email to their Honduras families that said that "The adoption department is still working on a normal schedule so we don’t see it impacting adoptions during the investigation" and that it's "business as usual".  I am part of a forum that is strictly for Honduran adoptions so I am in touch with these people, both publicly on that forum, as well as privately.  I have heard that the interim Secretary General is not allowed to sign any adoption related paperwork, so no dossiers can be approved and put on the national waitlist during this time.  So, to me it sounds like adoptions ARE being affected and that it's NOT business as usual.

However, my agency had their monthly conference call which I listened to and they talked about these issues and concerns.  They said that the current Secretary General is in fact allowed to sign adoption paperwork and is working on stuff that has been sitting around since May and is attempting to get things caught up.  So, I don't know if this is a new development, or if there was a miscommunication earlier or what, but this news does sound encouraging.  I also hope this means that the families in Honduras now waiting to finalize their adoptions will get to do so very soon, so they can finish out their month long stay without too much stress and get home with their children.  Also, Gladney now has two approved dossiers, and one went all the way through the process in Honduras without any additional paperwork requests.  I bet that family is thrilled!

No word on the status of our dossier, but I don't expect to hear anything for another few weeks.  It is taking about 4 weeks to get dossiers translated into Spanish and ours has only been there for two weeks.  I am still waiting to get our updated psych eval from our psychologist so that my caseworker can review it before it is finalized and ready to go when IHNFA requests it.  Hopefully that's it, but we'll see!