Some more recent shots. Tihi (5) is in the orange plaid, Bitsu (7) in the pink and Turi (8) in the white. They look pretty athletic, don't they?
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Girls Have Been Moved
Our girls have been living in an orphanage in the southern part of Ethiopia for the last 4 months. The final stage of their journey was when they took the 16 hour ride north to the capital of Ethiopia to wait for us in the foster home there. We just received word that they were moved on Monday. That means they are now waiting for us! They are set and ready to go!
We bought our plane tickets! That's right. Yesterday morning, we purchased 7 one-ways (two one-way there, 5 one-way back). It was a long, grueling week of talking with every airline, looking online, trying to use miles, looking into adoption discounts before we finally found a really good price through a travel agency we have used in our past days with the Jesus Film. Praise the Lord.
3 weeks from today we fly out!
We bought our plane tickets! That's right. Yesterday morning, we purchased 7 one-ways (two one-way there, 5 one-way back). It was a long, grueling week of talking with every airline, looking online, trying to use miles, looking into adoption discounts before we finally found a really good price through a travel agency we have used in our past days with the Jesus Film. Praise the Lord.
3 weeks from today we fly out!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Recent pics
These were just taken this week! Turi (8) is the one doing the back flip and Bitsu (7) seems to love basketball!
Here They Are
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.
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.
Our Adoption Story II
So, April arrived and we needed a home study done. This is where someone comes to your house and reviews everything about your life. It's not really about the house but about the couple, your background, marriage, family life, finances, etc. Well, in the States these are not a big deal. Every state has local social workers who will perform this service for you. But in the middle of Siberia?
We contacted an agency located out of Germany who specialized in just what we needed: international home studies. We booked a guy for the nearest date he was available. So, he flew in from Germany (mind you, we pay for all of this) and we drove 9 hours north to the closest airport to pick him up. We stayed overnight with some friends, picked him up and drove 9 hours back to our village. He was extremely laid back, which we thought was a huge blessing since we do live in a village without running water. He stayed with us two nights and Curt drove back up the 9 hours north and came back the next day. Our home study guy assured us the home study would be completed in a month. Excellent. At this rate, we could have the girls by September.
We began to prepare our friends in the village for what we were doing. We first had to explain adoption (literally translated "taking children"; not the best start). Then we had to explain that the girls were African.
That was tough. Russia, as a stereotype, is extremely prejudiced. There are the white Russians and the minority people, like those we lived with, who look Asian. Typically, anyone who wasn't white was an outcast, had a hard time finding work in the main cities, etc. This includes the minorities who are just as Russian as anyone else. So, the fact that our girls were so far out of the box was so strange. We never had any negativity. But we did have a lot of confusion. And then there were the few people who thought it was awesome and went as far as to say they even looked like us.
A month came a went. Two months went by. No completed home study. There were complications, none that had to do with us. The organizations were disorganized and everything was taking longer than planned. 3 months. 4. August came and went with no completed home study. Now we were mad. This process was never supposed to take this long. Getting the girls in September was no longer an option. Maybe the end of the year, if we were lucky.
I woke up at 5:30am one morning to an audible voice, "Trust Me". I had been praying about the situation and was so frustrated about the constant delay. After that, every time I started to get frustrated, I remembered what God had asked of me and I chose to trust that His plan was better than mine.
Finally, in October, all of our paperwork was completed. We handed in everything to our agency and now just had to wait for our court date. We received news that the girls were already in the orphanage. Their father had died of malaria a few years earlier and their mother was unable to provide for them. Usually, the agency and orphanage try to keep the children with their parents, parent or relatives as long as possible since they will get one-on-one attention. But for whatever reason, our girls were dropped off earlier than expected. In a way, we were relieved. This meant they were still available for adoption. It had been a year and a half since they were first brought in and nothing had been heard from them since. But sad, at the same time. Best case scenario is always to stay with family and if there was enough food, this would've been the best situation.
We contacted an agency located out of Germany who specialized in just what we needed: international home studies. We booked a guy for the nearest date he was available. So, he flew in from Germany (mind you, we pay for all of this) and we drove 9 hours north to the closest airport to pick him up. We stayed overnight with some friends, picked him up and drove 9 hours back to our village. He was extremely laid back, which we thought was a huge blessing since we do live in a village without running water. He stayed with us two nights and Curt drove back up the 9 hours north and came back the next day. Our home study guy assured us the home study would be completed in a month. Excellent. At this rate, we could have the girls by September.
We began to prepare our friends in the village for what we were doing. We first had to explain adoption (literally translated "taking children"; not the best start). Then we had to explain that the girls were African.
That was tough. Russia, as a stereotype, is extremely prejudiced. There are the white Russians and the minority people, like those we lived with, who look Asian. Typically, anyone who wasn't white was an outcast, had a hard time finding work in the main cities, etc. This includes the minorities who are just as Russian as anyone else. So, the fact that our girls were so far out of the box was so strange. We never had any negativity. But we did have a lot of confusion. And then there were the few people who thought it was awesome and went as far as to say they even looked like us.
A month came a went. Two months went by. No completed home study. There were complications, none that had to do with us. The organizations were disorganized and everything was taking longer than planned. 3 months. 4. August came and went with no completed home study. Now we were mad. This process was never supposed to take this long. Getting the girls in September was no longer an option. Maybe the end of the year, if we were lucky.
I woke up at 5:30am one morning to an audible voice, "Trust Me". I had been praying about the situation and was so frustrated about the constant delay. After that, every time I started to get frustrated, I remembered what God had asked of me and I chose to trust that His plan was better than mine.
Finally, in October, all of our paperwork was completed. We handed in everything to our agency and now just had to wait for our court date. We received news that the girls were already in the orphanage. Their father had died of malaria a few years earlier and their mother was unable to provide for them. Usually, the agency and orphanage try to keep the children with their parents, parent or relatives as long as possible since they will get one-on-one attention. But for whatever reason, our girls were dropped off earlier than expected. In a way, we were relieved. This meant they were still available for adoption. It had been a year and a half since they were first brought in and nothing had been heard from them since. But sad, at the same time. Best case scenario is always to stay with family and if there was enough food, this would've been the best situation.
Our Adoption Story
To catch you up...Last March, while living in Siberia, Russia, we began the adoption process. A series of events, led us to believe the Lord was leading us to adopt now. I had been doing some adoption research, hoping that we could adopt from the minority people group we lived among. After 3 months of questions, back and forth to this office and then that one, we finally concluded that adopting independently (without an agency) was impossible. In the process, we got hooked up with an agency called Christian World Adoption, based out of North and South Carolina. Funny enough it was them who told us we couldn't adopt independently from Russia according to their laws. The Russian authorities had no idea.
We wrote several adoption agencies, shopping for the right one. CWA was the only one to respond. Once we decided on them, we asked them which countries that they worked with had sibling groups. Certain countries do not allow you to adopt more than one child at a time. We felt the Lord leading us to adopt a sibling group of 2, 3 or 4 and we were ok with children who were older, both cases considered "special needs" as they are very hard to get adopted. Well, CWA responded and the only two countries they worked with that had sibling groups were Russia and Ethiopia. When we looked at the fees per country and saw how expensive Russia made it, we were left with Ethiopia. Funny. Looking back it seems so obvious that we should adopt from Ethiopia. Curt spent a month there working on 3 children's version of the Jesus Film (a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ) and just loved the people.
So, we asked to see their waiting children's page. 9 pages full of sibling groups. We looked through it and then looked through it again. We prayed a lot (how do you chose???) and settled on 2 different sibling groups that we asked for more information about. One sibling group was being seriously considered by another couple. Our girls were not. Again, the wide open door.
And so the process began.
First, CWA was very hesistant to work with us. We lived so far out in our village in Siberia, they weren't sure we would have the resources it took to work on the process. "Like which resources?", you ask. A US notary. We needed most documents notarized and our closest US Embassy was a 12 hour car ride and 24 hour train ride away. Could we get all the documents and make one trip? No. They had to be done in order. This was beginning to look impossible. We asked if the Russian notary would notarize a copy in English, if we presented them with the same copy in Russian. They said no. It had to be in Russian. Stalemate.
Then the Lord intervened again. How about using our Power of Attorney, which we already set up in the States? A POA is us and has all the power of the law to act on our behalf in every situation. We approached CWA about it and they were very hesitant because they had never done this before. But we convinced them of our confidence and were finally able to move forward.
We wrote several adoption agencies, shopping for the right one. CWA was the only one to respond. Once we decided on them, we asked them which countries that they worked with had sibling groups. Certain countries do not allow you to adopt more than one child at a time. We felt the Lord leading us to adopt a sibling group of 2, 3 or 4 and we were ok with children who were older, both cases considered "special needs" as they are very hard to get adopted. Well, CWA responded and the only two countries they worked with that had sibling groups were Russia and Ethiopia. When we looked at the fees per country and saw how expensive Russia made it, we were left with Ethiopia. Funny. Looking back it seems so obvious that we should adopt from Ethiopia. Curt spent a month there working on 3 children's version of the Jesus Film (a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ) and just loved the people.
So, we asked to see their waiting children's page. 9 pages full of sibling groups. We looked through it and then looked through it again. We prayed a lot (how do you chose???) and settled on 2 different sibling groups that we asked for more information about. One sibling group was being seriously considered by another couple. Our girls were not. Again, the wide open door.
And so the process began.
First, CWA was very hesistant to work with us. We lived so far out in our village in Siberia, they weren't sure we would have the resources it took to work on the process. "Like which resources?", you ask. A US notary. We needed most documents notarized and our closest US Embassy was a 12 hour car ride and 24 hour train ride away. Could we get all the documents and make one trip? No. They had to be done in order. This was beginning to look impossible. We asked if the Russian notary would notarize a copy in English, if we presented them with the same copy in Russian. They said no. It had to be in Russian. Stalemate.
Then the Lord intervened again. How about using our Power of Attorney, which we already set up in the States? A POA is us and has all the power of the law to act on our behalf in every situation. We approached CWA about it and they were very hesitant because they had never done this before. But we convinced them of our confidence and were finally able to move forward.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)