[PMAPhila]

My DH & I are trying to decide if we should switch adoption agencies.

We were told in March, when we submitted our application, that we WOULD be able to adopt from China (in spite of my husband's past arrest related to alcoholism). He has been sober for 5 years - PTL.

We were told a 2nd time in April, that as long as you did not have a history of drug use, we would be able to adopt from China, so we paid the home study fee.

AFTER the home study visit, our SW called us & told us that we did NOT qualify for China and that we could switch to their Korea program. We chose the agency based on their China program, not Korea.

We have found several other agencies that have significantly shorter wait times (up to 18 months less than our agency's current wait times) and do not know if we should switch agencies. Our home study agreement (which was signed based on the agency's representation that we would qualify for China) says that we cannot transfer the home study to a competing program.

We are torn. I am still waiting to hear back from another agency to see if we even qualify for their Korea program (they use SWS, which has different requirements than Holt, our current agency's contact in Korea).

I have tried to turn this over to the Lord again & again, but it just gets harder & harder for me to relinquish the control (that I know I do not have).

Please help.

Tricia

[Yash]

Tricia,

I'm so sorry this happened to you guys. I'm praying that God will lead you both in the right direction.

Yash

[momtosami]

I am so sorry to hear about this. We had a similar situation only we found out to late. We started out adopting in China in 2000, my husband had an alcohol charge on his record as a teenager which at that time was 13 years ago. Well, our agency saw no problem with it, had us get extra letters for it and couple of other things to include in our dossier. Well, when it came time to get our referral we were skipped over in our agencies batch of referrals so we waited some more. Eighteen months of waiting we found out that China denied us a child because he had that on his record and they felt it had not been long enough (mind you it was 13 years ago at that time) we were devasted but looking back on it now if they had not denied us then we would not have our precious little daughter from Guatemala here with us today who is 3 1/2. I am so thankful that God knew the bigger plan and that our child was not in China but in Guatemala. I could tell you many things that you could just see God at work in all of it.

I hope that you get the answers you need and feel at peace about your decision. I know it is hard and I hope it all works out for you guys.

Susan