Dear Friends,  

I am preparing for my trip to Uganda in about a month and am excited to get back to the country I love! We have some great orphanages who have asked for our help in finding families for their orphans and I'm excited to explore the ways we can partner with them. We also have some staff changes that will be happening and I hope to be able to train our new staff so that our program will be stronger and more efficient than ever.

This week I received basic information on 13 kids (one sibling group of two) who are orphans and need families. These kids are all over the age of five, and several are HIV+. They are so cute! Gathering the paperwork needed to make these kids "referral ready" and then eventually "court ready" is a daunting task. It takes weeks, sometimes months, but I'm working to hire additional help in Uganda to try and speed up the process.

I received news today that the members of Parliament in Uganda will be discussing international adoption soon. We hope that if any changes are made that they are clearly in the best interest of the children. International adoption is a hot topic and child trafficking has been an problem. But there are many older and special needs children who truly have no options for a permanent family in Uganda. We hope that Uganda is able to come up with solutions that will protect and provide families to all of their children who need them.

The High Court of Uganda will be going on vacation sometime in July and will resume sometime in late August/early September. We have two families hoping to travel this summer before courts close; we are hoping for speedy paperwork processing for them and then speedy court dates!

We are thrilled that one our families came home this past weekend with their two new children. They were in Uganda for about 8 weeks. Please keep another of our families in your thoughts; they are still in Uganda and are very anxious to get home.

If you are on Facebook, please find the AAI Facebook page and Like us for a chance to win an AAI T-shirt! The 250th like wins! We post interesting adoption news, inspiring stories and general information about AAI to our page.

Remember, if you are sending anything for me to carry to Uganda, please plan to mail it to me before July 1. Please email me for my address.

I look forward to updating you all from Uganda!