Matching update

We received an email from our program coordinator last night....

The server at the agency is down and there is extensive damage to the agency's property...trees and wires are down.  They don't expect to be operational until Friday at the earliest.

The program coordinator was at home Monday night prepared for the shared list release when her power and internet went out at 7:30pm.  (Perfect timing Hurricane Sandy!)

Both of these outages combined left her unable to access the list and match families.  She did say that her power and internet connection at home have been restored.  As of last night, she said there really weren't any children remaining on the shared list that looked like a match for any of her families.  (I believe there are 4 families that she is trying to match this month)  She said she is prepared for the list re-release that will happen Thursday night, and is hopeful she can find some matches that night.  All of the families who "locked" a child's file on Monday night have 72 hours to make a final decision to accept the child or return the file.  So on Thursday night some children's files are added back to the shared list again.

We are anxious for tomorrow night, hopeful that maybe we will be matched and begin to move forward on this journey.

The Shared List & Frankenstorm

Tonight...finally...on the 5th Monday of this LONG month...China will be updating the Shared List and our program coordinator will be looking to match us.  Except...tonight is also the night Frankenstorm (aka Hurricane Sandy) is making her way through our little part of the world.  We have been anxiously awaiting this day for over a month.  Our LID (the date our dossier was registered in China's system and we became eligible to be matched with a child) was ironically the same day as the shared list update last month.  But you don't find out your LID until a few days after the actual LID so we missed last month by just a couple days.  Now we are worried that power outages and loss of internet connection will prevent us from being matched this month.  Who knows??  My heart is a little heavy since we have been looking forward to this night for so long.  We are riding out the storm...staying up late waiting for "the call".  Maybe...just maybe...

Any day now...

Today we had a conference call with the program coordinator of our agency to discuss the matching process.  We spoke in detail about the gender, age and medical conditions we are most comfortable with.  She informed us that now that our dossier is registered in China and we are eligible to be matched with a child at any time.  The waiting child list is updated once a month (usually on the 3rd or 4th Monday night of the month) and there is a mad rush of many agencies trying to match families with children at the same time.  BUT...she said sometimes children are added to the list on different days during the month.  So, she checks the list often to see if a new child has been added that could potentially be a good match for any of her waiting families.  Now we are on guard...on standby...anxiously awaiting the phone call or email that she has found a child for us.  And this could happen ANY day now!!  Although, I think we will likely have to wait until the next update of the shared list (probably on October 22nd) to see the sweet face of our child...there is the chance that it could happen ANY day now!  We are ready, we are waiting.