July 2014 Update

We got our first taste of Ethiopian food in June when our family made a trip to Nashville.  We ate at Gojo Ethiopian Café and Restaurant.  Funny thing. . . I had heard about the laid-back lifestyle/culture in Ethiopia and we got to experience that in planning this day trip.  I had researched our options for lunch and had actually chosen to go to another Ethiopian restaurant.  According to their website, they were open all day, but when we pulled in, straight from a 2.5 hour drive, it was closed.  Brad called from the parking lot and was informed they were opening at 1:30 pm.  It was 11:30 am at the time and we were all hungry so we quickly got on our phones and found another place that was only about 5 miles away.  We got there and were afraid it was closed as well.  It didn't have the best curb appeal.  The parking was behind the restaurant, but we had to walk around to the front (which bordered a busy street) to get inside.  Once inside, Gojo was decked out in African décor.  They had a lunch buffet, and we decided that was the best way to taste a variety of dishes and not risk a potentially long wait if we ordered food.  The food was really good and even the kids all found things they liked.  I have to say the injera (spongy flat bread that is a main part of meals) was not at all what I was expecting.  Our waitress was a sweet younger woman from Ethiopia.  She asked us how old Micah was and told us she had a 3 year old daughter whose birthday was the day before Micah's.  She also had an almost 2 year old and was a little surprised when we told her we were planning to adopt from Ethiopia.  She mentioned we must be planning a big family--ha!



One of my "plans" for preparing for our adoption that I finally got around to starting this month was reading more books about adoption.  I read the A Christian's Guide to the Connected Child, Fields of the Fatherless, Brown Babies Pink Parents, and I am almost finished with Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew.  In July I plan to read There is No Me Without You and Parenting the Hurt Child.

I am grateful that we did move 2 spots on the waiting list but a little discouraged it wasn't more.  We'd been led to believe that once the referrals started again in Ethiopia, there would be a "flood" of backlogged children waiting to be matched.  So far that hasn't happened.  On the brighter side, the post-referral process is supposedly working well.  Currently, the time between a referral and court (official adoption) is taking about 5 months, and the time between court and Embassy (bringing the child home) is taking around 2 months.





I am praying for a big month of referrals in July because courts will close for the rainy season in August and will likely not reopen until October.  During court closure, no children can be approved for referral for adoption so there are very few, if any, referrals.  Until next month. . . 

June 2014 Update

I got what I wanted (besides an actual referral) for our June update! 





We moved 5 spots to 140, which I had arbitrarily picked as my goal number for this month's update.  I knew there had been 2 referrals in May, so I was prepared to only move 2 slots.  We don't know exactly how we ended up moving 5 slots but we are still grateful for it!  As usual now, I looked up Psalm 140, and while most of this psalm is dark, I found the last 2 versus to be so appropriate!

 

 

   Our case worker calls to check in every couple months just to see how were are doing, to make sure we don't have any major life changes, and to answer any questions we may have.  She called in May, and I told Brad afterwards, I almost thought she was fishing for information to see if we would consider a referral outside our current parameters.  The case worker and I reviewed our children's current ages as well as our adoption parameters, and she asked if we would consider expanding our age parameters.  I told her we would consider it potentially in the future as our children get older, but not necessarily at this point.  We chose our parameters because we wanted one child younger than Micah and a potential second child younger than Brandon.

 

So a little weird moment:  in our email update this month, our agency (Lifeline) listed some waiting children affiliated with the agency who represents us in Ethiopia as well as waiting children with a second agency Lifeline contracts with.  There have been some occasions where Lifeline families on the same waiting list we are on are offered a referral match with the other agency if a referral is not matched with any of that agency's waiting families.  It would require updating all the dossier paperwork and some additional expenses to change to the other agency, but we would certainly consider it for a referral.  On the other agency's waiting children list (which has never been revealed to us in the past), there was a healthy sibling set of 2 boys aged 5 and 8.  I now believe that the day I spoke with our case worker, she may have been considering telling us about that sibling set!  Honestly, when I saw the info on the sibling set, I even thought maybe we should consider them and Brad agreed.  At this point, we are just praying for more guidance and discernment, but it was exciting to think we were sort of "close."

 

 

There is RARELY a day that goes by that I don't think about our children in Ethiopia or am reminded of our adoption plans.  It is so hard to feel like part of your family is missing.  About every month or two, I get particularly overwhelmed and EVERY time, God has been faithful in giving me hope.  Whether it is encouraging reports about the status of adoptions in Ethiopia, news of a referral from our agency, hearing God speak to my heart, or even a "close call," there is always something.

 

 

 

 

I am still hopeful that we will get a miracle and receive a referral by the end of this year.  For now, I look towards next month and am thinking the number 130 (or lower) sounds good :)

 





May 2014 Update

We got our new number yesterday:



Upon learning our new number, I immediately looked at:

Psalm 145

A psalm of praise. Of David.

¹ I will exalt you, my God the King;
    I will praise your name for ever and ever.
² Every day I will praise you
    and extol your name for ever and ever.

³ Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
    his greatness no one can fathom.
⁴ One generation commends your works to another;
    they tell of your mighty acts.
⁵ They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty—
    and I will meditate on your wonderful works.^[b]
6 They tell of the power of your awesome works—
    and I will proclaim your great deeds.
⁷ They celebrate your abundant goodness
    and joyfully sing of your righteousness.

⁸ The Lord is gracious and compassionate,
    slow to anger and rich in love.

⁹ The Lord is good to all;
    he has compassion on all he has made.
¹⁰ All your works praise you, Lord;
    your faithful people extol you.
¹¹ They tell of the glory of your kingdom
    and speak of your might,
¹² so that all people may know of your mighty acts
    and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
¹³ Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
    and your dominion endures through all generations.

The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises
    and faithful in all he does.^[c]
14 The Lord upholds all who fall
    and lifts up all who are bowed down.
¹⁵ The eyes of all look to you,
    and you give them their food at the proper time.
¹⁶ You open your hand
    and satisfy the desires of every living thing.

¹⁷ The Lord is righteous in all his ways
    and faithful in all he does.
¹⁸ The Lord is near to all who call on him,
    to all who call on him in truth.
¹⁹ He fulfills the desires of those who fear him;
    he hears their cry and saves them.
²⁰ The Lord watches over all who love him,
    but all the wicked he will destroy.

²¹ My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord.
    Let every creature praise his holy name
    for ever and ever.

Our agency issued 3 very surprise referrals over Easter weekend.  Turns out, children in Ethiopia who had already passed the regional court to be referred for adoption will not be subject to the 2 months of local advertising for a family.  This means many of the children who have been "paperwork ready" for the past several months will not have to wait 2 more months for their referral.  We've also been told that there is evidence that all agencies involved are working hard to process paperwork for the adoption of orphans, from the orphanages, to the regional courts, to the federal courts, and finally the embassy.  Several families were informed of court dates this week and are finally getting to meet their children, many of which they got referrals for last year.  We still have no idea when we could get a referral, as there are likely several families ahead of us on the waitlist who have similar profiles for a sibling group, but at least we moved up on the waitlist!



Between our income tax returns, donations, and frugal savings for Lent over the past couple months, we were able to save over $9000 for our adoption!  We now have the required $15,200 for 2 referrals and $3000 for foster care fees.  We still will need at least $15,000 to cover travel expenses (2 trips), post-adoption reports from our social worker, and required updates to our home study and immigration (around $2000 which will likely be due before we get a referral).


We look forward to what the upcoming months will bring.  Please keep praying for our family to be complete! 

A little more info our wait. . .

I was so excited at our new number the first of April that I didn't take the time to make a new Africa with our number.  Now, almost 2 weeks later, here it is:

 

We found out a few days after our monthly update that although adoptions are expected to officially continue, another step has been added to the process to ensure orphan status.  In addition to the previous steps required before a child can be referred for international adoption, the orphanages must now advertise for at least 2 months to see if a local suitable person in country is interested in adopting the child.  This is great and obviously I have no problem with exhausting all avenues for a child before they are adopted out of country.  The only distressing part of this is that all the children who have been "paperwork ready" for months to be referred for adoption now have to wait at least 2 more months before they can be matched.  I hate that children who have already likely been in the orphanage for almost a year are now having to wait even longer.  This means there will be another 2 months before we can expect to see referrals pick up.  The bad news is that referrals often slow down or stop when courts close for the rainy season, which is August to October and quickly approaching.  We have been told this entire process from the time a child comes to the orphanage until they are eligible for referral could be as little as 4 months eventually (and under ideal circumstances).  So, we continue to wait.

It is Holy Week (today is Palm Sunday).  As part of our family's sacrifice for Lent, we have tried to limit our spending of "frivolous" items, such as eating out, entertainment, and other things we simply wanted at the time, rather than needed.  That amount, combined with our income tax return and a couple generous donations, is going to almost double our current adoption savings!  I will give more details on the next post!



The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly about Orphan Care

The GOOD:

We made $173 at our yard sale last weekend.  The day was actually cold and rainy, so we sold more than I would have thought, given the weather.  Despite the weather (and leftover junk in our garage that I refuse to bring back into the house), it felt good to do something for our adoption after these long months of waiting.

We got our monthly update today.  We were very surprised to see that we moved 10 spots this month and our new number is:

148

Another adoptive family had given me the idea to pray and study on the psalm that corresponds with your waitlist number.  Until this point, our number was too high to do that.  I really never thought this month would bring us to Psalm 148, whose repeating theme is "Praise the Lord"!

The BAD:

We didn't move 10 spots because of new referrals.  It has now been 8 months since a new referral.  I suspect the reason for our movement this month is many families have left our agency or the Ethiopia program.  People are getting anxious with each passing month and understandably, there are families who have dropped out or chosen to pursue other adoption routes.

The US Department of State released a statement in the past few days confirming what our agency had been telling us: the slowdown is due to some issues with changes in policy regarding adoptions in Ethiopia.  The Ethiopian government is now claiming they have resolved the issues and that adoption referrals should now proceed "as normal."

We are still hopeful that referrals will resume soon (as we have been the past few months).  Our agency has made some changes as well.  They do not have a transition home anymore for adoptive placements.  Children will now remain in the orphanage until their family brings them home.  I am disappointed by this, but I assume it was getting difficult to financially support the transition home with no referrals.  Our foster care fee (to pay for our children's care once they are referred to us) is doubling from $750 per child to $1500 each.  The good news in all this is that the newer policies seem to mean a shorter time frame between court (official adoption) and embassy (when child can come home).  Instead of waiting 3+ months, families are now typically waiting 6-8 weeks between those times, which means less heartache of being an ocean away from our child(ren).

The UGLY:

Brad and I have always thought a lot about and prayed for our former foster children.  Even if they weren't in our home for very long, they still touched our hearts permanently.  Our last foster child, T, was 17 when he was with us.  We had heard last fall his grandmother had been awarded custody of him so he was no longer in the foster care system.  Brad saw him out walking in Tuscumbia this morning so he stopped and asked if he'd meet us for lunch.

It was so sad.  He told me right off that "nothing good had been happening" in his life lately.  When T moved back in with his grandmother last fall, he had to change school districts (for the umpteenth time).  T didn't have the best grades as he hadn't typically had any support or encouragement in school and had changed schools multiple times.  When he went to transfer from Sheffield to Muscle Shoals (both schools he has attended prior), even though his grandmother was in district, he was told he could not enroll.  They told him he would end up dropping out anyway and if he wanted to fight their decision, he could get an attorney.  So of course, T dropped out of school :(

We asked him if he was currently living with his grandmother,  He told us his grandmother had told him she didn't want him living with her anymore.  He "defended" her decision by telling us she has dementia.  We asked where he was staying, and he said he didn't have a permanent place to stay and drifted between a cousin's house, friends, and admitted he sometimes "stayed outside."  We asked T how he eats (he looked thin). He said he buys food from the grocery store he works at part-time (where he doesn't even get an employee discount).  His job provides irregular hours but he is limited with employment because he has no transportation and has to walk everywhere he goes.  T says they approached him about becoming manager, but with no high school diploma or GED, that is not possible.  He looked into getting his GED but would need to attend classes across town, which is difficult with no car.  He is honestly stuck in his circumstances.

It made me so sad because a lot of that could have been avoided.  When T was with us (in foster care), he felt he was old enough to take care of himself.  He would have had opportunities to get a good start on life, but he just wanted to go back to his biological family.  His family has been unable or unwilling to help him.  Brad and I reminded T today that we are here for him if he needs anything.  We hope he will take us up on the offer the next time he plans to spend the night outside.  We are treading lightly at this point.  We hope to maintain communication with him and help him realize we do care about him and want to help him.  Please pray for him!

My Adoption Retreat and a Fundraiser

This past weekend, I attended Created for Care, which is a Christian weekend retreat north of Atlanta for foster and adoptive moms.  It was good for me.  I have really struggled the past few months with all the discouraging news coming out of Ethiopia regarding international adoption.  There have been no referrals in months and we are so far down on the list, even if there were regular referrals occurring currently, we would likely be looking at years of waiting.  Even though we've only been on the waiting list for Ethiopia since November, this month makes a year since we started the process.  Combined with the time spent trying to adopt through foster care care first, we are approaching three years since we first got the call to adopt.

I chose a word as a theme for this year and it is: HOPE.  I've been seeing that word a lot in my life, and I need it as a reminder when I start to doubt that adoption will ever happen for us.  I see the word in scripture, hear it in songs, see it on T-shirts (including in Amharic-the official Ethiopian language).  I had hoped to hear God speak to me this weekend about our adoption journey, and He did.  He told me to "WAIT" and I was reassured that we are right where we should be.  So for now I will continue to wait in hope.

One thing that has helped me is to stay busy.  This has been easy really since we got on the waiting list with the holiday season, Brandon's birthday, my half marathon, our marriage conference, Micah's birthday, a trip to Disney World, and then my Created for Care (C4C) conference.  Now that my schedule has cleared a little, I was wondering what I would do next.  I quickly found my next "project" when I got home from C4C and had a flier about a neighborhood yard sale the end of this month.  We have not participated in these in the past simply because I didn't have the motivation to go through all our stuff to get things together to sell.  Now with unused items piling up and a need to save some serious cash, we will be having a yard sale March 29 starting at 7 am.  The great thing is many others in our neighborhood are having yard sales that day, so it will hopefully attract a lot of people!

The fact is, we need to save approximately $20,000 more for our adoption (in addition to what we have already paid and have saved).  The referral fee alone for 2 children which is due immediately upon accepting a referral is $15,200.  There are other expenses, such as $2000 for foster care fees (care after referral before they can come home).  We also need money for 2 trips to Ethiopia, which could be $10,000 or more depending on the price of airline tickets.

If anyone has anything they would like to donate for us to sell, please let me know!  We really appreciate it!  Mostly, please keep praying for our family and our adoption journey.

No change :(

We found out yesterday that for the second month in a row, our wait list number did not change.  For families at the top of the list, this has actually been the case since August 2013.  It is becoming more and more difficult to wait and trust, particularly in our case, since we are SO far down on the list.  I did finally send off our immigration update to get official approval to change our status from 1-2 children and to change our age range up to age 8.  February was a very busy month for us between the Forever Marriage Conference Brad and I planned to Micah's birthday and party and then a family trip to Disney World.  I squeezed in mailing the immigration paperwork February 20 and was told it would arrive February 24.  We'll see how long the wait is this time (we were told not near as long).

Our adoption agency, as well as the agency who represents us in Ethiopia remain hopeful that adoptions referrals will pick back up "soon," but we were told that we should expect to wait an additional 6-12 months for a referral.  Considering the only wait time we were told was 15-18 months once we were on the list, and the list grew considerably before we completed paperwork, AND we have now changed our parameters to possibly include siblings, we have NO idea what our anticipated wait time should be.

Because of some changes that were made to ensure adoptions were ethical, a lot of children who were ready for referral have had to get entirely new sets of paperwork.  In addition, the Minister of MOWCYA (basically the government agency that regulates adoptions in Ethiopia) has made statements implying she is personally anti-international adoption.  While others are in support of adoption, she is somehow single-handedly holding things up by fighting with the regional governments over who has the final say in approving children to be referred for adoption.  Apparently she has been making quite a few "controversial" statements about various topics lately, so we have been asked to pray that either her heart is softened towards the orphans and adoption or that she gets reassigned to a different position.  In the meantime, the orphanages are under a great deal of stress and strain with more and more children who are not being referred for adoption as well as the task of gathering new paperwork on children who they believe are eligible for referral.  I'm not sure how well the Ethiopian government supports the orphanages.  I get the impression a lot of the supplies and resources come from outside agencies, such as relief organizations and adoption agencies.

Please do not "broadcast" this information as the adoption environment is so unstable right now, even well meaning posts can be viewed as negative by those who make decisions in Ethiopia.  This is combined with recent allegations against IAG, an adoption agency that is being charged with multiple illegal and unethical adoption practices in Ethiopia, and creates a lot of doubt in the people of Ethiopia about the future of international adoptions there.

I am excited to be attending Created for Care (C4C) this weekend north of Atlanta.  It is a Christian retreat for adoptive and foster mothers, and I have heard WONDERFUL things about it!  It is a time for prayer and education, as well as a chance to connect with other women in similar circumstances.  I don't personally know anyone going, but I know several women via Facebook who are attending, including several from our adoption agency who are waiting to adopt from Ethiopia.  Adopting can feel very isolating as others who are not in that situation really cannot identify with all the emotions and stress and everything else that comes both before and after placement.  I look forward to all I will learn and the women I will meet!  I will try to update when I return from C4C.

Please keep praying that referrals will resume soon in Ethiopia, and the true orphans will be matched with waiting families!