We're getting there

I get an "Ethiopia Update" email from our adoption agency every couple of weeks or so. I received one yesterday. They currently have 21 dossiers in country right now, with 10 families having already gotten their referral. They said of the ten, the shortest waiting period for a referral was 12 days (!!), and the longest was 3 1/2 months. From there, currently, families are traveling to Ethiopia to get their children about 2 - 2 1/2 months after receiving their referral. This gives you some idea of the timeline we will be looking at, though the more families that keep applying for Ethiopian adoption, the slower things will get. When I met with my coordinator last week, she said that Ethiopia is the "new China," that it is the fastest-growing adoption program out there. I felt so happy about this, on the one hand-- it spoke hope to me for some of the 4.8 million orphans in Ethiopia. But honestly, another part of me worried about the possibility of the process slowing down. Waiting, in adoption, is the hardest part.

Last week we had our garage sale to help raise money for the adoption fund. It was hot and rain threatened, but we made $220. Not bad. The best part of the garage sale were the kids-- ours and the neighbor kids. Peter and Sam each sold some of their own things and gave a portion of what they earned to the fund. They also ran the lemonade/snack stand we had (their idea). They told all their neighbor friends about why we were having the sale and those kids became some of our best customers. They just really wanted to HELP, you know? One of the boys even dropped by later in the evening to give me three pennies. "For your adoption," he said, most proudly. I was very touched. The next day several kids asked me if we had earned enough to "get a baby." After all of their enthusiasm, I didn't have the heart to tell them, "Uh, not quite." I just said, "We're getting there! Thanks to all of you, we're getting there." They seemed happy with that...

This week we go get fingerprinted for the Immigration/Dept. of Homeland Security paperwork. Please pray for this. This paperwork takes the longest amount of time to process and is the thing that has the most potential to hold up a dossier. It's the immigration paperwork that will allow Kezia to be brought into the States. It's a good sign that we already have our appt. to be fingerprinted. Please pray that the rest goes as smoothly.

DID YOU KNOW...

that Ethiopia's religious roots are Judaic. The Queen of Sheba, after traveling to meet King Solomon, brought Judaism back with her to Ethiopia. Later, Ethiopia was converted to Christianity. Today most Ethiopians practice an orthodox form of Christianity similar to that of the Greek Orthodox Church.