Ordinary Time

1 new family next door + 1 large television set + 0 curtains =

We are still waiting for the Dong Nai officials to complete their end of our paperwork, but the US Embassy has been moving ahead on their end. For those of you who don't obsessively keep up with the state of adoptions in Vietnam, you have missed quite a roller coaster ride. Sadly, some agencies who work in Vietnam are more concerned with their own bottom line than with the well-being of the children who come into their care or the prospective adoptive parents who hire them. As a result, the US Embassy felt it was necessary to investigate the status of more than a few of the children for whom visas were applied, and even denied some, causing the parents to have to leave Vietnam without their children. In order to avoid future occurrences of this scenario, new regulations have been put in place. Parents need to apply for the child's visa before they travel and the adoption occurs. This way, if there is anything questionable about the situation, all parties involved know bef...

although I'm not sure it makes the wait any easier.

[Yikes! 2024 me here to say the concept of first time obedience is bad news!! Read on at your own peril. Look for parenting posts I wrote in the 2020's to see where I am now and marvel at the change. It was a change that was difficult, so do yourself and your children a favor and just skip this kind of parenting.] I just noticed that Jena had asked me a question in a comment on my post about obedience. As I was writing my reply to here, I thought maybe others would be interested in my answer as well. Here it is: I just noticed your comment on my blog, sorry it it's been a while since you asked your question! There are a couple of things we do to encourage first time obedience. One tactic I use regularly, and probably works best for grade school age and up, is that if the child doesn't respond cheerfully and right away to a request, a second job will be added. Pretty quickly the child learns that it would have been easier to just do the initial request in the first pl...

We still have no provincial approval. We are now at 9 months of waiting for something that by Vietnamese law is supposed to take two to four months. According to our agency, there is nothing wrong with our paperwork, just that the provincial officials don't see the need to move quickly. (Well, we're long past quickly, now we're just talking movement.) In the meantime a little boy heads quickly toward his second birthday, still living in an orphanage, still waiting to have surgery to correct his cleft palate. We are not the only family. I believe there are three other families whose files have gone past the average time for approval. Please pray with us that the officials will be moved to approve the files of these children. I believe that only divine intervention will cause these officials to act.