Saturday, June 19, 2010

Finally Waiting In a Line!

Hello Friends,
Are you ready for some good news?! I am on cloud 9!
We mailed off our dossier to our agency yesterday! I should arrive in Oregon on Monday and from there go to the orphanage in Ethiopia!!! Then it will fall into the hands of a board member of the SOS EE orphanage who will read over everything about us and match us with a child!
Some of you are thinking you missed an announcement of us getting an answer to our letter to the Ethiopian govt asking if Amos can be excused from court. We have not received an answer yet but I found out some info this week that lead to our decision to send off the dossier without hearing back from our letter.
First of all, our letter went to one of the 3 judges in Ethiopia. He looked over our letter and gave us the thumbs up. However, he wanted to make sure he was correct in his thinking so he sent it to the top judge and there it sits (has been sitting for 6 weeks now). Ethiopia adoption courts are extremely backed up hearing cases and will continue to be until they close down hearings for August and September. Our agency was surprised that our letter didn't get an answer faster but they think it is because the courts are in 5th gear with all the changes happening.
Secondly, we boiled it down to this. If our letter gets a thumbs up, we will send off our dossier and I will travel alone. If our letter gets a thumbs down, we will pay more and wait longer to have our child escorted to the US. Either way, we need to send off our dossier and be matched with a child so I asked (again) if we can just send off our dossier to get that 4-6 month wait going while we wait to hear back from our letter (which we think will get the thumbs up). Makes sense right? I tried doing this 2 months ago (Sending dossier and letter at the same time) but I got a 'no' from the agency). I think they wanted to keep things in a sequential order and we didn't want to loose $6500 if the letter got a thumbs down. However, escorting is still available so we will get a baby either way!!! And the agency really didn't think an answer would take this long.
Lastly, I heard from an adoption friend today that Ethiopia is showing more grace on the 2 parent travel rule than previously feared. So we have that going for us!
So that's the skinny! Good news! I am seriously so happy to be waiting for both at the same time. The thought of waiting for an answer for an unknown amount of time just so you can wait for 4-6 months on top of that to be matched is awful.
So hopefully we hear back officially about our letter soon and then we'll know whether to just wait on our referral (child they match us with) or get paperwork together to have our child escorted when we get matched. Either way, our paperwork will soon be on the desk of someone who will match us with our baby! ...Our baby that we have waited 2 years and 9 months for!
Those of you who pray for us can pray that our dossier arrives safely in Oregon and then Ethiopia and that it falls into the right person's hands there.
Thanks everyone:)