Thursday, September 9, 2010
“Happy Birthday Michael! Don’t you know you’re too old to being doing this? You’re supposed to be taking cruises to the Bahamas! Maybe… but this is better still.”
HI! We are Michael and Julie Parnell. Our 4 yr old daughter Zoe and older daughter Jen are pictured in the family photo. At this moment we are finally able to sit back and wait for our dossier to arrive in Beijing at the China Center of Adoption Affairs. Xiaoqing Cai, our wonderful agency coordinator, at Bay Area Adoption Services near San Francisco, mailed our dossier off to China on Monday, August 30, 2010. The dossier is the complete package of paperwork you must submit to CCAA.
Since late March we have been “chasing the mechanical rabbit”. We always felt we were running behind even though we were doing our best.
It all began in January, when a woman visited Zhuzhou Social Welfare Institute , our Zoe’s orphanage. In our Zhuzhou yahoo group, she talked about a little girl names “Hai Yan”, a 6 year old girl with a glass eye. They were attending a Christmas program at Zhuzhou as part of a heritage tour for their daughter from Zhuzhou. Hai Yan repeatedly came up to them and sat with them through the Christmas program. The woman concluded her email by advocating for Hai Yan.
For the next three weeks we tried to find ways to claim her through unorthodox methods and do the paperwork afterwards. We contacted several agencies, some telling us they would reserve her for us if she came up on their list. Finally, we found out the foster family wanted to adopt her and she was very attached to them. It was a letdown but we knew it was for the best. Hai Yan had been with them for six years.
During February and early March, we pursued an Ethiopian adoption. We initially claimed a boy named Miskir, only to find out later that he had a cousin at the orphanage named Hawi. We went through much soul searching because we didn’t feel we were ready for two more older kids, yet didn’t want them adopted separately. We eventually released them both, praying that God would keep them together and so it was—they were adopted by the same family! We had only the best of intentions. God took care of the rest. When I think of Ethiopia now, I think only of beautiful kids and a beautiful people.
As March “marched” on toward April we returned to searching through the special needs children of China. We wanted Zoe to have a sister of her people. Xiaoqing and BAAS was highly recommended by a friend. We signed up with BAAS and Xiaoqing gave us access to their list. We wrote down about 10 boys and girls on the lists to check into further. But Feng - we couldn’t resist that face and the thought of her “aging out” of the orphanage. We asked Xiaoqing if we could claim her. We discovered that only people who already had their dossier logged in at CCAA could “lock” her file, but if she was on the shared list over 30 days, we could then “lock” her file.
We had to wait about three of those four weeks, nervous the entire time, that someone might claim her before the 30 days was reached. About three days before the month was up, we asked Xiaoqing to lock her file on the 30th day. She did so graciously on April 19th. On April 28th, the CCAA gave us “Pre-Approval” to adopt Zhu Hai Feng. From then until now we worked feverishly to complete our homestudy and dossier. In spite of our best efforts, the CCAA’s initial deadline of July 28th passed, but Xiaoqing got us an extension and now we come full circle back to the present.
As we wait for our Log In Date, there will be additional steps, added when China signed the Hague Convention, between our Log In Date and when we receive our TA (Travel Authorization). Looking forward to that Log In Date! It’s a relief to finally get everything in Beijing to comply with the CCAA’s requirements.
