Now What?

What's Next?
For the immediate now, we wait.  We are in the waiting, praying, hoping phase of adoption now.  We are currently waiting for the medical forms on E. Once we get those, we will have a couple weeks to get everything reviewed by a doctor.  After the doctor reviews the files, we sign the formal contract for M and E.

Once the contract, or referral is signed, we are in Congo hands.  That's the scary part.  We will have zero control over anything at that point.  The more we learn about Congo, the more we fall in love with the country.  But, the more we learn about Congo, the more we realize the "why" behind the 4 million orphans that live there.  It's a mess.  Adoption from there is a mess.

Our first step is to pass court in Congo.  This should take around 2 months.  Court is followed by a 30 day period where any family member can come forward and claim the children.  After that 30 day period, the kids are "legally ours."  I am super excited about when we will be their legal guardians because at that point the kids will be taken out of the orphanage and put into our agency's foster home.  In the foster home they are fed 3 meals a day!!  There is a nurse on staff, a social worker, and an English teacher all in the foster home.  Yay!!!

The second step is a formal investigation by the US Embassy in Kinshasa.  They will send an investigator to learn as much as they can about our children's stories.  They do this in order to verify that there is not any fraud in the adoption and that the children are legally orphans.  Although the 3-6 month waiting on this is long, we are really thankful that we will be able to go through with this adoption knowing that it is legit.

After the investigation we should, in theory, be able to go get our kids.  BUT, right now Congo is not letting children leave the country.  So, this is a big deal.  The official word from the gov't is that in September they will start issuing exit papers for children again.  We have no idea if that will really happen or not.  We are hopeful, but realistic at the same time.

Best case scenario, we could be traveling by December.  Worst case scenario, we could end up with 2 children in Congo who are not allowed to leave the country.  We hope and pray for the best!