January, 2012 - We realize that our family is meant to include a child or children who were born in a different part of the world. Now our task is to discover where our children might be living, and when is the right time to start the adoption process....
May, 2012 - We sign up with the Uganda program at Journeys of the Heart agency in Portland, and are matched with a little girl.
June & July - days are filled with arranging paperwork, education classes, and homestudy visits.
Our first match falls through, and we are matched with a sibling pair.
August - the "waiting, waiting, waiting" begins, in the first case for our homestudy to be approved. Our sibling match also falls through. Our homestudy is approved by the agency for US approval purposes.
September & October - We have a new match, with pictures, video, and short descriptions of our little girl. We thought our homestudy and dossier would be sent off by this point. However, we wait and wait some more for different readers to confirm that it matches the standards set by Uganda. Meanwhile, the agency in Oregon is very busy finishing their Hague re-certification, and the orphanage in Uganda is very busy seeking approval from the Ministry of Gender, so no one is getting much work done on individual children's or family's cases.
November - Our homestudy and I-600A goes to US Immigration, and our dossier goes to Uganda.
December - We will be officially fingerprinted for the US approval, and the orphanage director and lawyers in Kampala begin the arrangements to clear our daughter for adoption.
What happens next? Almost certainly, in January we will receive permission from US Immigration to bring an orphan child into the US on a family visa. What happens in Uganda is much less certain, and there is not much for us to do but wait and pray.
In the Ugandan system, a child is not fully cleared as adoptable until their prospective family's dossier is in place. So although there have been unofficial meetings with the parents, and some documents assigning her care to the orphanage, all the work has waited until now. Our daughter's parents, and any other important relatives or elders in the village, have to be brought into Kampala to "make their statement" to the lawyer, which apparently involves hours of interviews to make sure that everyone is being honest and that all options for the child to stay with her family or in her village have been exhausted. The lawyer's office then writes up those statements, and the relatives have to be brought back to Kampala again to review and sign their statements. (If something turns up in these interviews -- for instance, they find a birth parent who objects to the placement -- it could mean that the child is not available for adoption after all. Therefore, we are not allowed to visit our child before the interviews are concluded and reviewed for problems; after that point we would be able to go to Kampala and spend time with her in the orphanage.) Meanwhile, the social worker in charge of the child's original village, and the social worker in charge of the district where she is now living, have to write up reports stating that they believe it is in the best interest of the child to be placed in our family. After that, an official birth certificate has to be produced, and various official signatures have to be procured. Once the lawyer thinks that all the documents are in place, he petitions a judge for a guardianship hearing, which would usually be scheduled for around 2-4 weeks away. Both adoptive parents have to be present for the hearing, and ideally show that they have some sort of relationship with the child. The judge has a great deal of leeway in setting up further requirements, deciding post-placement reports, etc. After guardianship has been granted, the parents can keep the child with them, but cannot leave the country. Then they apply to the US Embassy for an American passport for the child, which can take another 4-12 weeks.
So when might all this happen? Basically, on Uganda time. It could go quickly, but it is much more likely to take longer than anyone imagines!
We are hoping and praying that the initial assessment will be concluded by February or March, at which point we could plan a trip to get to know our little girl. Emerson and I would probably stay in Uganda until the rest of the paperwork was concluded, so we could begin to build our trust and family relationships. Mark would come with us initially, and then return for the guardianship hearing -- unless by some miracle the hearing managed to be pretty close in time to our first trip! Then I would live with the two children in Kampala until all the passports were complete and issued.
Hopefully we will meet our daughter this winter, and be home by late spring, but it could take much longer.
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