Catch Up Time: How China Adoption Works

Here goes...I will try to explain where we are in the process and how it works.

Roughly how it works:
Referrals (where the adoptive parent recieves a photo and some information about the child they have been matched with by China Center of Adoption Affairs, CCAA) usually go out at the end of each month. At that time the adoptive parent can accept or not this referral. Which of course we will accept with great joy.

Where we are in the process:
At the end of this month referrals will begin with the people who logged their paperwork into CCAA on June 16, 2005 (in the world of adoption lingo this would be "people with a LID, log in date, of June 16, 2005"). A one year wait from LID to referral. Last month, May, CCAA sent referrals out to LID's of June 7 through June 15, 2005, nine log in dates. :) Which is better than last month, April, only seven LID's were sent out then. Which leads to...

Why is it so hard to say when we will get our baby?
As you can see now we do not know from month to month how many referrals will go out at a time. Back in the day (about a year ago) CCAA would send out referrals for a full month at a time and you could pretty much count on the wait, from logging in your paperwork in China (LID) to traveling to China, to be about six months. As you probably noted above each month that referrals only cover part of a month and it is taking a few months to get through one month of referrals it pushes the time table into a longer and longer wait. So we are currently at a twelve month wait from LID to referral. Our LID, which is our place in line in the process, is March 29, 2006, so as it stands now we look to get our referral about that time next year. This is all subject to change of course, and things will happen when God intends for them to happen. When it should happen. We are truely getting a lesson on patience.