"One year since beginning our adoption journey"

That is what my ticker says here on my blog.

Today is our one year anniversary of our decision to adopt.  One year.  There has been NO movement in Honduras....no families place on the waitlist, no referrals that we know of.  Nothing.  The only people that I am aware of who brought children home from Honduras are those who started their adoption journeys before we did (before Honduras opened their adoption doors to U.S. agencies) and used attorneys, not agencies.

We are discouraged to say the least.  If we had been waiting this past year and were seeing families moving forward with waitlist numbers and referrals, it would make things so much easier emotionally for us.

Our dossier has been in Honduras for 4 months and 3 weeks according to the ticker on this blog.  We received that one request for a new employment letter for Dave months ago - the first week of November - and that's the last thing we heard about it, so it's been over 3 months since we've heard anything in regards to our dossier.  With all of the political issues, corruption (NOT involving the children), investigations, agency accreditation problems, etc. everything has been at a standstill for a few months now.  Our agency has told us that things should start moving again and that the adoption committee should be meeting this month to place families on the waitlist and make referrals.  It would be fabulous if that happened, but we are not holding our breath on that. We won't be part of that because our dossier has not been all the way through IHNFA yet, but it would be wonderful to learn about other families who are ahead of us!  I really hope this meeting takes place, but at this point I'm of the mindset of "I'll believe it when I see it."  I know other families must be feeling disheartened and frustrated as well because there have been a few who have moved on to other countries.

So, it's been exactly one year since we began this journey, and so far it has been the complete opposite of what we had hoped.  Going into this we knew there would be ups and downs and that it wouldn't be smooth sailing, because international adoption is a bumpy road, but we did expect a bit more than what has happened so far. At this point we expected to be on the waitlist for our daughter, and being happy and excited for each referral and completed adoption happening ahead of us, and knowing that our time was coming to be matched with our daughter.  None, not one of those things has happened.  Will it?  Only time will tell.  We are really looking forward to hearing about the adoption committee meeting and hope that it is a positive step in the right direction.  Fingers crossed!