And still ........ we wait.

Still no news.

Still the sadness and frustration. We are in a suffocating purjatory with approx 12 other families in a similar Holding Pattern.

It appears that in the recent reshuffle (after the previous Minister for Women, Children and Social affairs had resigned - not entirely sure why) no-one was rushing for the post and so .......

...... it remains 'unfilled' (you can put my poor grammer & bizarre use of imagery down to a good old fashioned ratty-ness).

Thus it seems that without a Minister in place (pro-international adoption or otherwise) - nothing can/will happen.

The Prime Minister has taken the post as an interim measure but, I'm guessing, will be looking to appoint someone as he has enough on his plate.

The good news is that Sagarmatha Childrens Home http://www.childrennepal.org.np// has been given the governmental 'thumbs up' - this means that whenever the international adoption process starts again (ie for new applications), the government has inspected the practices of the Children's Home and has found it to be ethically sound.

There is much written about in the press about the problems of trafficking of children so those of us who are so closely connected to it wholly support anything that ensures the children are legitimately (though of course tragically) available for adoption.

No one who has or is adopting a child would / could argue that it is not better for a child to be with his or her biological family and within he or her own culture.

We could not sleep at night if we thought there was any chance that any child we adopted had been coerced away from a family that wanted & was able to keep him or her.

Bottom line:
our Arms,
our Hearts,
our Home,
our Families,
our Friends are all open and ready to welcome in any soul who's journey is supposed to bring him or her to us - we will not / must not judge the circumstances in which we will find each other.

Just as we do not judge others journeys to create their family.

We are not saints. We just feel this is meant for us.

HOWEVER, this is a darn hard road. Would we have started it had we had a Google Map for the WHOLE trip complete with a full breakdown of the hazards we would have come across on the way?

I don't know. I guess the key to it all is what happens in the end. If we end up at the destination we wanted, it will have been worth every tear shed, blister acquired.

When we set out we were armed only with a mini-A-Z and we only got one page at a time!!!

And so ......... on we plod..... one foot in front of the other......