James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Switching countries to Ghana

Since Feb, Uganda has been struggling with their adoption process. In Uganda, the law is that one must reside there for 3 years in order to adopt. The way International Adoption has been proceeding around that in the past is to get a guardianship with the intention to adopt by the Ugandan courts, and then come to the US to make it final. In the last few month new judges has have come in and recently they decided to take out those words "with the intention to adopt".  Some (judges) argue that they should be following the law of 3 years, and some argue they should be following the law of doing what is in the best interest of the child. In the meantime, the US embassy has now refused to issue the visas to leave the country for obvious legal reasons. The very sad part, is that some families went over to Uganda, met up with their child, got legal guardianship (from the Ugandan courts), and now are waiting. I have been following one families blog and she has currently been there 10 weeks while they sort all this out. We have been trying to ride it out and not make a decision to switch until we ultimately had to (the country gets listed in the finalized Home Study), even though I think we knew in our hearts we wouldn't have confirmation in time. At this point, Uganda has agreed to put the wording back in (why the heck don't they just change the law!), but now the US embassy wants letters from 3 different Ugandan Ministries, which lawyers are advising will take months.
While we pretty much knew this was coming, our agency recently put the Ugandan program on hold, so it's really not a choice even if we wanted to push through.  What are our choices? Well, when you sign on with an agency, you are boundried by the countries that they work with. The other two countries that will work with our interests and family, are Ethiopia and Ghana.  When I talked further with the agency in the last two weeks, they updated me on some news that has been transpiring in Ethiopia including that now you have to travel there twice. After prayer and research, we decided Ghana was our best choice. It's on the west side of Africa and borders the ocean. Looks like a beautiful country and a great place to visit.
I've begun to pray for twins. It would be so much easier.

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