Our Ethiopia Adoption Journey

Many have asked how we are doing, so I thought I would take a brief moment to get everyone up to date.

Daddy has been fortunate enough to take the next three months off from his day job to spend with his little girls, help mommy and keep the business running.

The “stand offs” with Mia are becoming less frequent, although we still have about one per day, and it’s usually right after nap time. We go through mommy picking her up and sitting her on a chair as she screams (I swear she just likes to hear herself because it isn’t real crying, more like a long high pitched hum) and as soon as I say “do you want me to hold you?” she immediately stops, gets on my lap and is fine.

Bri is still very afraid of the dogs, but she is getting better.

They both have decided that cats are OK though so that’s a start.

Each of their personalities are starting to come out and both are complete ham’s.

They love to entertain by singing, dancing, and acting out scenes from earlier in the day.

These scenes are usually about each other making a fuss about something, and it ends up being very funny.

Bath time is probably their favorite activity and bubble bath is a must.

Both are willing to try new foods, but Mango, Papaya, Banana’s, Injera, and Shiro is their favorites.

However I can’t leave off gold fish crackers and Teddy Grahms (Bri goes WILD if we pull out a bag of Teddy Grahm’s, so we save them as our secret weapon).

So far we have made a trip to Sam’s, Walmart, and a friends house, and each thing was scary but exciting.

The key to meeting new people is that the strangers must ignore them.

If they are shown any attention by people they don’t know they get scared.

When they are ignored, after about 30 minutes they start to let their personalities shine.

Both girls love their Wondit’s (brothers).

English is not going as well as we hoped, so there’s a lot of pointing and showing of what they want.

Sleeping is going extremely well.

We start our day around 7:00 AM with bathroom (Bri is potty training) and milk.

Then it’s breakfast, bath time, a little bit of play time, snack time and then a nap.

Next we have lunch, more play time and another nap.

Lastly we have snacks, play some more, dinner, and yet more play time and then it’s bed time between 7:00 and 8:00.

Everything is very hands on, and there’s not a lot of independent play at this point, which is crucial to the bonding process.

How are mom and dad doing?

We’re tired, need a shower, don’t get to go to the bathroom in peace very often, and rarely have our own plate of food.

Our king size bed now seems very small!

Typical mom and dad of toddlers behavior =)

There’s so much more I could say, however I need to take advantage of this opportunity of a quiet house and work on laundry!

Just wanted to update everyone on our situation.

We received confirmation from the Embassy that we have an appointment on June 6!
At this appointment they will ask us a few questions.
We have no idea what those questions will be, but this is the US Government/Embassy so I’m sure it will be interesting =)
After that we will wait 48 hours for M and B’s visa’s so they can come into the US legally and be citizens as soon as their feet touch American soil.

Can we get an Amen? Hallelujah? WoooHooo?

We’re still tying up some loose ends, but what we do know is that we are leaving on Saturday (like in 3 days!) and be back on American soil on June 9th!

1. We are hoping to do some volunteer work with Embracing Hope
Check them out and see the hands and feet of God working to preserve families.

2. Spending time with our wonderful friend Daniel, who has been a HUGE blessing to our lives.
How blessed are we that we made a connection with someone who lives in the country our daughters are from??

3. Hanging out with an awesome couple from California that we traveled with on our court trip.
The wife in this duo has been my Barnabas over and over again for the last few months, and the husband always keeps us laughing, even in the tough times-another blessing!

4. Beginning  June 3 we will get to hang out with our girls and get to know each other as a family
Do I even have to mention what a blessing this will be??

5. June 8th we begin to travel back home as a family of 6!

Our 15 year old son will be traveling with us, and we have the privilege of hanging out in London for a long layover-Fish and Chips here we come!
Our oldest son will be house sitting for us-yep blessed again!

Blessed, Blessed and Blessed!

We will sign off, leaving you with this beautiful video

Children of God-Third Day

We haven’t posted in quite some time, and I won’t go into the mired of reasons why, but a few are time or lack there of, and emotions.

I can say without a doubt that the old saying is true “adoption is not for the faint of heart”, but it’s also not for those who lack patience!
We’ve found that it has been a test of our faith every step of the way, and if it weren’t for God, we probably would’ve thrown in the towel at month #3!

I’m going to try my best to get everyone up to date, but first our time line:

08/26/2010
We accepted a referral for two waiting children. They are the most beautiful sisters on the planet-yes we’re biased =)
This is when we said yes, finished all of our paperwork, had all of those said papers sent to our agency office in Oregon, who looked them over, and then were sent to Ethiopia to be translated and looked over again one last time before being sent to Ministry of Womens Affairs (I will refer to them as MOWA through the rest of this blog.

MOWA is the government agency in Ethiopia that has a HUGE part all adoptions. The last I heard they had a total of five-YES 5- employees sifting through everyone’s paperwork.  All that paperwork fits very snugly in a 5 inch binder (we’ve seen the binder-it’s enormous). They must write a letter to the courts after going through all of the papers either in approval or disapproval, and the courts must have this paper before you can “pass court” (we’ll talk more about that later)

12/23/2010
Our case was submitted to the federal courts-we wait for them to assign a court date.

03/14/2011
Court date-there is entirely too much to write in one blog post about our trip to Ethiopia, but we traveled 8000+ miles to go before a Federal Judge, answer about 5 very rapid fire yes or no questions and were done.
Sadly we did not pass court the first time because of a few circumstances, one of them being that there was no letter from MOWA.

We did however get to spend approximately 2 hours with our amazing daughters and that made the entire trip worth every second of being sleep deprived, squished, car sick, etc.

04/01/2011
Second court date-we did not have to be there again, the lawyer went before the judge for us.
Unfortunately we were told this time that the judge needed some time to go over the paperwork and make a decision-no explanation given as to why or when she would make that decision, so essentially more waiting, praying, begging and pleading with God.
I think I even tried to make a deal or two with Him.

04/20/2011
We found out that we passed court on 04/11!!
More paper work overnighted to Oregon and then on to Addis Ababa.
This means in the eyes of the Ethiopian Government WE are the legal parents of these girls, and there is NOTHING anyone can do to change that.
All that is needed is new birth certificates and passports.

05/10/2011
We found out our girls had been moved to Addis Ababa from Durame
This is a double edged sword, while we are happy that they are closer to coming home, we are sad that they had to suffer another loss.
They were with the same Nanny’s for an entire year. Can you imagine suddenly being dropped off in a place you’ve never seen, and expected to live with people you don’t know?? It makes me shutter in fear.

05/17/2011
Our case was submitted to the US Embassy in Ethiopia
This means that all of our paperwork is back in the hands of the United States.
They will go through all of the documents one last time to ensure that there are no red flags, the children weren’t sold, the birth family wasn’t bribed, etc.

Once they have made sure that everything is correct, they will send us (and our agency) a list of dates they can see us for an appointment.
It could be anywhere from 24 hours (we’ve obviously already passed this mark) to 14 days, however the average time lately has been about 7-10 days.

So this is were we are now……..14 months from starting this process, 9 months of staring at pictures of two precious angels, 2.5 months of trying to remember every detail of our two hour visit.

The wait is excruciating tough.
The reward will be totally worth it.

We would appreciate prayers, not for us but for the people of Ethiopia.
They believe in God and they LOVE GOD, however they are waiting for miracles like clean water, an education, crops to grow, and not to have to bury a loved one due to Malaria or starvation.

In Christ,

J and J

When I first heard that an AIDS test was required, I have to admit that I was a little taken aback.

Just the name of it has such a stigma in our culture today, making one think that if you are getting the test done, you must be promiscuous or an IV drug user.

But the reality is that many of the children in Ethiopia are given up for adoption due to the fact that one or both of their parents have died from this dreadful disease. Therefore it makes sense that the government would make this a requirement. I presume that they would have second thoughts about letting a healthy, non AIDS child go home with a parent that has been stricken with this death sentence-I know I would.

That would put these precious children in another situation of loss and could potentially expose them to the virus as well.

So with all of that being said, I will gladly go and have my blood drawn! Mr. Joe has already had his testing done, so now it shall be my turn.

By the way this is one of the last few things that need to be completed for all of the paper work…YAY!!

Nothing like being finger printed and having an AIDS test done all in the same week =)

We have sent in our tax forms for the last 4 years, picture of the house, family picture, and our notarized agreement to adopt, so now is where the real fun begins….

We were notified that we have “officially” qualified through Holt, although that “officially” doesn’t mean a whole lot =)
Our finances are acceptable and we have been married long enough to adopt from Ethiopia.

Now is when my head has started to spin!
We received an email with all the necessary paperwork needed to start our background checks, questionnaire on our thoughts about parenting, forms that need to be filled out by our family doctor, forms that need to be filled out by employers, forms that need to be filled out for health insurance……I’m sure I am forgetting a form or two, but I think you get the picture.

I’m trying not to get too overwhelmed, because I know that if we take the time to fill everything out it will be helpful in the future and I am thankful that Holt and the Ethiopian government is concerned for the welfare of the children being adopted.

Hopefully with Joe and I being very thorough, the adoption process will move smoothly.
I would hate to get all of the paperwork sent to Ethiopia and then have them come back with questions which could potentially stall the process.

*sappy warning*

*sappy warning*

Oh how hard this is for me.
I don’t know how to explain it. Paperwork is not what I want to do……I want to pick out a name, buy her clothes and toys, I want to go furniture shopping for a crib, playpen, high chair and all the fun stuff she will need.
I want to bring her home and hold her!
But I know that I have to get forms filled out before that can happen.
Putting the cart before the horse is sometimes my specialty, but I know what must be done, so I shall conquer this paperwork and thank God every time I write an sentence.
He is in charge.
He has a plan.
He has chosen our child just specifically for us.
He is good ALL the time!

Proverbs 31:27
She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness

Mrs. J

So…..we officially started the adoption process this evening.  We decided to keep a blog of our experiences for several reasons.  We know there are a lot of friends and family who want to keep in touch with the current happenings and there are a lot of people who are looking to start the adoption process but have no real idea what to expect where to start or what it is going to be like.  So we will do our best to document our process, obstacles, lessons learned and hopefully allow you to share in our joy.

We decided to go through Holt International as we feel God is calling us to adopt in Ethiopia.  There has been resounding and very re0curring events that keep aligning our attention there.

If the act of doing and submitting the application is any indication of what this journey is going to be like, then it will be a very long process.  It took over an hour to submit the application, not because we did not have the information ready or because the questions were difficult but rather, because the last page to submit the payment information was not on a secured page and in trying to find a secure page to give them the payment info, reset and deleted all of the information we had entered.  This happened not once, not twice but three times.

The way I see it, Satan ain’t at all happy with our decision to adopt so he is going to test my patience at every turn.  Yikes!  I know God has something tremendous in store for us.  I now see I am not where He wants me,  so He is taking me on a journey I did not envision.  (Isn’t that a surprise (: ).

I can look at this one of two ways.  Either its going to be a long way tater or I need to hurry up and start doing the things He wants me to do and stop doing the things He doesn’t want me to do (impatience) so I can move beyond this obstacle.

- Joe