7/13/2006 - Adoption Update e-mail

It's been a long time since we've spoken to some of you. So, I felt it
might be a good time to let you know what's been going on with the
adoption. The adoption is still very much under way, however, we still
don't know when we'll be going to Peru to get the girls. There has been
a tremendous amount of paper work, background checks and exams that have
taken place since starting this whole process way back in January. We
wrapped up all the paper work about a month and a half ago, except for
one INS form. This form was supposed to be sent to us within 45 days of
our being fingerprinted. However, it ended up taking about 2 and half
months. We finally received it about three weeks ago.

When we finally did get this form, we rushed it off to our adoption
agency only to be told that it was not right. It seems that Illinois is
the only state in the union that, by law, holds back the complete form
until they have names of the children. Lucky us... Unfortunately, that
is not the way Peru handles the adoption. The children cannot
officially be identified till we are in Peru. I won't bore you with all
the details, but let's just say we were in a catch 22 situation.
Meanwhile, certain documents were under strict time restraints to get to
Peru before they were three months old, and one of them has just reached
that time period. Also, our goal had been to have everything submitted
to Peru at the end of May / beginning of June so that Peru would have
the months of June/July to approves us which would get us down to Peru
at the end of July or early August while school is still out for our boys.

Last week, the adoption agency had our lawyer in Peru submit the papers,
with the incorrect INS form. This was an attempt to at least get the
process started. Meanwhile, our home study agency got the Illinois part
of this straightened out, but we are still waiting for the corrected
form. We are not sure how SNA (the Peru adoption government agency) reacted to our
dossier. They may have started working on it or they may have rejected
it until the right document arrives. Obviously, we are still hopeful
that we make the end of July or beginning of August. Our understanding
is that it takes SNA a month to do whatever is that they do before
hopefully approving us and telling us to come down. We also have been
led to believe that they only release the children at the end of each
month. So, if we don't make July, it is very possible that we'll have
to wait until the end of August which means going down for the month of
September. In case you didn't know, we are told that it may take us 5
weeks of being in Peru to finish the adoption. However, a couple that
have just returned from their adoption made it back in just over 4 weeks.

That is a short summary of where we are in the process. I'll probably
e-mail again when we finally get "the call", and while we are down in
Peru. For now, all we can do is wait and be patient and pray.

Tim and Andrea Brooks