Adoption Story III

At this point, we were already back in the States. Now everything was done on our end and we were waiting for our court date to be assigned to us. Finally, we received a date in mid-February. We couldn't believe we had to wait that long! Court dates in Ethiopia were being assigned farther and farther out. We had 10 weeks to wait.
The court date is when the courts in Ethiopia review all your documents and decide whether they will legally assign the children to you. Rarely is someone denied but often courts ask for further information, either about the parents or the children.
Time came and went. Slowly it passed. People continually asked us about news and we had to keep saying we were waiting. Adoption is about waiting. There are a few things you do but mainly you just wait.
Finally, the week arrived. I was so nervous. What if they were denied? What if they wanted more paperwork from Russia? How were we going to get it? I prayed often. We asked everyone else to pray for us. And we waited.
February 13th dawned bright and clear. We waited for the call to tell us the outcome. At 10:30am, a call came from our agency. "Congratulations! You are now the proud parents of 3 Ethiopian sisters." It must be like giving birth only you get to sleep the night before. We were so excited. Feelings of joy and other things I could never explain washed over us.
We couldn't believe it. It was done...almost. The next step was the US Embassy in Ethiopia assigns you a date for when to come and get US visas for the girls. Well, the US Embassy was in the process of arranging things and was not assigning dates for March. Stalled...again. Waiting.
We prayed a lot more. That the Embassy would work through things and start assigning dates again so that we could go and get them. A week later, an email. The Embassy hasn't figured things out yet but was assigning dates for March. We were due to appear before them March 24th. WITH our girls. We have a month.