Referrals!

Well, another batch of referrals arrived today. We don't know the official cutoff from the CCAA because they are celebrating the Chinese National Holiday and are on vacation. But from what has been gathered on Rumor Queen the referrals go through November 30, 2005.

FIVE DAYS! That is all! I'm starting to get sick over this wait! I am sooo absolutely thrilled for all the families who are seeing their sweet child's face for the first time, but at the same time I'm absolutly depressed about how long things are taking!

I'm such a geek that I put together a whole spreadsheet to track the referral progress and estimate how long till we get our referral. So, here's what I've calculated...

The CCAA has referred 37 LID since we were logged in on 3/29/07.

Over the last 12 months they have averaged referrals for 9.42 LID per month.

At this current rate of 9.42 LID per month, we should expect our referral in late December 2011!

That sucks!
We "celebrated" our 6 month LID anniversary last Saturday, but we don't feel like it's much progress at all. Can you tell that I'm real down about this?

We did actually do a little something to sort of celebrate... We finally sat down and finished off the medical checklist and submitted it to CCAI. This means that we have identified a few special needs that we feel we can handle and we've asked them to match us if and when a waiting child's file is sent to them that meets what we can handle. We're still in the NSN (non-special needs) line, hoping that referrals speed up. But, if there is a child who has special needs that we can realistically handle, this gives God the opportunity to match us with the child that is meant for us.

Now, all we can do is wait.


Last month I posted a picture of 3 jars with glass stones and promised to give details later. Well, those stones each represent a LID ahead of us in the wait. The jar on the far left has 365 stones in it with the rest in the middle jar. Each time a batch of referrals comes in, I will take stones from the middle jar and move them to the jar on the right. By my calculation, there should soon be 37 stones in the jar on the right. I'll wait to move them until the official update comes from the CCAA. Then I'll take pictures and add them.

This is just a visual representation that helps Michael & I to "feel" the progress that is being made. If things keep up at this pace, there may come a point where we need to make a decision. This is a decision that we don't want to think about right now, but that we need to be prepared for. I keep praying each night that we will not have to make that decision. If you find it in your heart, please pray for the same.