Dazed and Confused….

So much has been going on, and I haven’t really had the energy to blog. Now that I do, I am so confused and I will probably just confuse all of you! Oh well, you can be confused with me and we’ll all be in good company.


A few weeks ago I requested that everyone sign a petition to get the government of Ethiopia to change their mind about some decisions that were made. The government made a decision to reduce the number of adoptions they process per day from about 40-50 down to 5. The US government adoption website is telling people who have submitted paperwork but have not yet received a referral of a child (which is us) that they could experience delays of up to a year or more. I was devastated to hear this! If you’re curious, here’s where you can read all about it:  http://adoption.state.gov/country_information/alerts_notices.php  read the alert from 3/9 and the notice from 3/16.

So, Aaron and I were sad (to say the least), we’ve been trying to get people to sign the petition, but haven’t seen any good news coming from the US government website of the Joint Council of Adoption. We’d pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that this wasn’t happening ANY time soon. It’s been rough.

Then… Yesterday I get a phone call from Jocelyn (our local social worker who did our home study). She asks me: “Since there is so much going on in Ethiopia, would you be willing to adopt domestically? We do not have enough families in IL who are willing to adopt children of a different race, and have an abundance of kids who need homes.” I was surprised, and thought, well if Adoption Avenues would allow us to discontinue the program and we could get some of what we’ve invested in the program back then maybe… but we couldn’t afford to do lose what we’ve invested and then turn around and pay the same amount for a domestic adoption.

So… I called Radu. Radu and I haven’t had much contact since all of this happened in Ethiopia. I tried to call, but couldn’t get through when I first heard word. I emailed and asked how this would affect our adoption and he responded by saying “You know that I will let you know, when we know FOR SURE what is going on.” So I call him yesterday and explained what Jocelyn had told me. I asked what my options were. He told me that if we backed out now we would lose everything we had invested. He asked why we would be tempted to do this. I told him because of the delays. So he went into explaining that this would NOT delay our referral (he’s expecting that next month). And that IF it delayed anything, it would delay the time between our first trip out: to go through the court process and our second trip out: when we can legally take her home. I’m confused. Why does the US government explain it differently? And if Radu is right does that mean families will be delayed up to a year or more between when they legally adopt their child in the country and when they can bring their child home? HOW SAD!!! Why would they keep a child who has been legally adopted by a family in the orphanage system for an additional year?!?! Is Radu right? Will we receive our referral next month? Will we still be going to Ethiopia this summer to meet our child and go through court? Will we have to leave our child there after that? How long will we have to wait to bring her home?

Major stuff happening with Ehtiopian Adoptions

Please go to the following website and sign the petition!

 http://www.gopetition.com/petition/43714.html

Fasika

This coming week is the week that lent begins. I have never practiced lent, being from an Evangelical Free Church background. However, I have always appreciated this time of cleansing and focusing on God rather than the things of the world in preparation for Easter. I have been studying Ethiopian customs and holidays lately and have been impressed by their version of lent.

Ethiopia is predominately a christian nation. More specifically: Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Tewahedo faith focuses on the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham was going to obey God and sacrifice his own son and the Lord sent a lamb for the sacrifice instead. They believe this was a foreshadowing or prophecy of God sending His son to die for our sins. Tewahedo faith depends on the death and Resurrection of Jesus for salvation, and therefore Fasika (Easter) is the most important holiday of the year for the Ethiopian people.

Typically the period of lent for the Tewahedo Church is 56 days before Easter. Rather than just giving up something for lent, they fast for those 56 days. At first I couldn't believe this, but I discovered that fasting for the Ethiopian people meant that they only eat one meal a day and don't eat any animal products for this entire time (including milk, butter, eggs etc.). OK, so they aren't going without food for 56 days, but that is still a huge sacrifice (I need my 3 meals and my meat!). So Fasika (Easter Sunday) becomes a huge time of feasting and celebration of what Jesus did for us that first Easter weekend.

Ethiopians fast prior to most of their large holidays. 40 days before Christmas, and 56 days before Easter. I know I hardly ever think about fasting, and when I do, it's maybe for a day. Perhaps we have something to learn from our Ethiopian brothers and sisters. Something to think about this Easter or Fasika season!

An invitation to share in the miracle...

One of the biggest challenges in international adoption is the financial piece of the the picture. Many adoptive families share in the sentiment that "our Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills" now he just needs to sell a few cows to make it happen! Aaron and I have been blessed in this process so far, and the Lord has been selling the cows along the way. We are getting very close to the end, and yet have some major expenses ahead. As we've prayed through how to face these next hurdles we have come up with a few answers: #1 we have begun to plan a 5k walk/run in our local area and #2 we have placed a donations button on this blog to allow our friends, who are not in the area, to share in the miracle of our adoption. We are hoping to raise enough to pay for the direct costs remaining to finalize our adoption. Anything that we raise above and beyond our direct costs we will be donating to:

Show Hope 
http://www.showhope.org/ This is an organization founded by Stephen Curtis Chapman that provides grants to families who have financial needs in the adoption process. We hope to bless other families seeking to adopt.  

and

Adoption Avenues Ethiopian Foster Home http://www.adoptionavenues.org/ This is the adoption agency we are working with. They recently started a foster home in Ethiopia, working to find more Ethiopian orphans permanent homes.

God has placed the desire for adoption on our hearts, and He alone will bring us through this journey. Thank you for considering coming along side of us, and further blessing the adoption process.

Dossier on route to Ethiopia!!!

Well, second time's the charm in our case. The paperwork debacle has been sorted out. IL secretary of state fixed and turned around a paperwork in a timely fashion. Our Washington DC courier then got them authenticated by the state department in DC. And then this time when our paper work was brought to the Ethiopian Embassy it was accepted rather than rejected! YAY! Oh and P.S. it only set us back an extra 120 dollars which was not near as bad as they said it was going to be! So... I was told it was being sent to Ethiopia Today. Once it is there it will be translated into Amharic, and then registered with the MOWA. MOWA reviews our documents for completeness and creates a dossier about us. The Claims and Authentication Section of the Protocol Office at the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Addis Ababa authenticates the dossier and returns it to the Adoption Team in the Children and Youth Affairs Office (CYAO) for approval. Once all those steps are done we just wait for a child to be matched to us! I've discovered that in this adoption process the key to getting through it all is to celebrate every small victory. So today I am thanking the Lord that our hiccup in our paperwork is over, and we are one step closer to knowing who little Sophie is. Hang in there little one, we'll be there soon!!!

Stilll not quite resolved.... but getting there!

Hello, from a very content Sarah who is currently sitting under a heated blanket with my kitty at my feet, drinking coffee, and enjoying Saturday morning to the fullest! Thought I would give you all an update on our little setback.... Monday I tried to call Secretary of State department in DC. I couldn't get through, left messages and sent emails. Still hadn't heard anything by Wednesday, so I called again. I got through, explained what I thought was the situation, and they were pretty rude with me, telling me there is no way they could have made that mistake. So I called Radu (our agency person) and told him. Apparently there had been a major miscommunication between Radu and I in the first place, it wasn't the DC office that had made the mistake it was IL who had messed up on 2 of our documents. Radu said he was really upset about this because as a notary if you make 3 mistakes your notary license is revoked by the State department, but they make mistakes all the time and no one looses their job there.

Anyway, so Radu also gave me a bit of a ball park figure on how much this was setting us back in extra charges, which is why this mistake frustrated him so much. So, he basically wanted me to call the IL state department to chew them out.... I called, and tried to explain the situation nicely. They basically blamed Radu for not catching their mistake. This frustrated me a bit, and I told them that 2 wrongs don't really make a right, or let them off the hook for the mistake they made in the first place. At about this point the lady told me she didn't want to talk to me because I didn't know what I was talking about, and she wanted the number of our courier service in DC who was taking care of getting the paperwork back to them. So, I gave her the number. Later that day I called the courier service and asked if they had heard from IL SOS. She said they had, and they were trying to resolve the issue together (apparently even though I "didn't know what I was talking about", something I said got through to them so they are trying to fix their mistake), and it should be resolved early next week. This was reassuring, but I am still not sure how much it is going to set us back...

I'm hoping next week goes a little smoother than this last week went in general. Although, I am thankful for the lessons I am learning in faith and trust. At this point everything is really completely out of my hands! There is nothing I can do to speed things up, so I just need to let it all go. One of these days my little girl will be in my arms and all of the waiting and worrying will seem like nothing. Happy Valentines day little one, wherever you are. This Valentines day my heart is out there with you, will you bring it back to me soon?

Trying to stay calm...

Hi....
I write this entry with a bit of a heavy heart, and the remnants of a migraine. Last night I got some rough news. The Ethiopian Embassy had sent our agency an email saying they rejected our dossier. The reason being: the Secretary of State Department messed up our authentication on 2 of the documents in our dossier. There are 2 types of certificates and on 2 of our documents they gave us the wrong type (I don't know how this happened). So, they wanted to know what to do from there... either send back our dossier, or have the courier bring it back to the Secretary of State in DC and have them fix it. Of course that is what we are doing (and of course it is an extra charge). I am really hoping that this all gets smoothed out within the week, but to tell you the truth it really put me in a tale spin last night, which probably caused my migraine... which put me in immediate care today to get a shot of imitrex.

Please pray for me over the next few days, that I can rest and trust. I just feel a bit overwhelmed by all this right now. Thanks!