Spoke with Coordinator!

We spoke with our coordinator last night. Her name is Lana and she is from Kazakhstan, but she lives in D.C. She told us there are two reasons the MFA is extremely slow right now…..#1 They just had an election, so the new officials are learning the ropes at the MFA right now….#2 Things slow down in Kazakhstan this time of year with officials & judges going on vacation, etc., etc. She said the in country coordinator, Svetlana, is checking with the MOE on a weekly basis & as soon as they know something they will let us know.
She also told us about 3 of the regions they work in, so I thought I would tell you what she told me about them.

Almaty - Capital in Kazakhstan. This region is requiring 3 trips right now which doesn’t sit to well with me, since I’m scared to death of flying. I’ve only flown 1 time when I was 14 years old & that was only 1 way….home from Florida. She said the 3 trip requirement isn’t that bad considering we wouldn’t have to be in Kazakhstan for very long on the 2nd & 3rd trip, so we wouldn’t have to miss as much work.

Uralsk - We know a family that lives in our school district (River Valley) that adopted from this region at the beginning of 2007. This regiona would be my choice going by what we know right now. It only requires 1 trip that last’s about 30 days and the children available seem to be younger than some of the other regions. The Hypes Family adopted a 9 month old and the coordinator said she just finished up two adoptions from there and the baby’s were 9 months & 11 months. We requested a child as young as possible, but we are willing to go up to 2 years old. This region is also called a blind region….this means that you do not get any information on the children that are available, but they will make sure there are more than just a couple of children available within our specifications. At this point I think we are both completely ok with flying blind…it doesn’t matter to us the sex of the child or children as long as they are healthy as possible. We would love to bring home two children, but we aren’t sure if we will be allowed to do so.

Ust Kamenogorsk - Ust is where we were going to travel with our previous agency. She mentioned that they are not currently working in Ust, but that if things change Ust would be an option. We were told that when our dossier gets to the MOE they would check and see if our referral from our first agency is still available. We aren’t holding our breathe for this one…knowing what we know now about our first agency, she was probably never available…that was part of their bait and switch tactics that we fell for.

If all goes well, we should get our LOI sometime this month, which means we should be flying in January. We are hoping for this anyway. It could just be wishful thinking, I’ll just continue to pray that we hear something soon and we can finally start preparing to travel. I can’t take much more of this waiting and not knowing anything. Our dossier has been at the MFA since May with our old agency and since the end of October with our new agency.
We hope everyone has a wonderful CHRISTmas and Happy New Year! Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
Chad, Michelle, & Cody Meenach
November - 2007