"So have you heard anything?"

This is the question we get most often. If you've been with us on the journey for a while, you can skip to the last paragraph for THE LATEST update. If you're just joining us on this journey, let me give you some context.

We started the Rwanda portion of our adoption journey last May. (The journey really started November 2007, but that's another story for another time!) We gathered all the documents we needed and updated our homestudy during the summer (while on our summer mission trip which added it's own complexities). We submitted our dossier (the pile of documents) to the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion in Rwanda on August 31, 2009. Then the waiting began.

On December 10, 2009, we received our "Letter of Non-Objection", which is basically our approval letter from the MIGEPROF (the Minister of Gender and Family Promotion, the cabinet member who handles all Rwandan adoptions). This was a biggie! Celebration time. With that letter, however, we received a note saying they'd changed the process. Instead of receiving our referral (the match with a baby) directly from the orphanage - Mother Teresa of Calcutta Home of Hope Orphanage in Kigali Rwanda - we would receive our referral from the MIGEPROF's office. And instead of receiving it in two weeks, they informed us it would now take 2 months. While it was a setback, we were kind of relieved in some ways, just to have a time line.

Then, the last day of January we got an email from Veronique, who was the MIGEPROF's right hand girl, handling all the interactions with prospective adoptive parents like us. She told us our file was at the orphanage and we should call Sisters about what medical tests we wanted done on our baby. We talked with the chief Sister on February 1, 2010. She matched us with a child that day! She said we would receive his picture sometime the next week, as they had to return it to the MIGEPROF's office and we'd receive it from Veronique on email.

Well, then that weekend Veronique resigned! It was a week and a half before they were able to replace her. Jeanne Marie stepped in to the role about 3 weeks ago. Since then, there's been little setbacks, but mostly there's just lots of work she has to get caught up to speed on.

THE LATEST: Our lawyer in Rwanda emailed us this morning and said that she thinks we'll probably receive his picture sometime late next week. We're holding that loosely. :) We've been matched with a little cutie for 5 weeks now and have yet to see his face. We're still hoping to travel in March... hmm.... i'm not sure that's still realistic. Ok, April!