The Long Road Ahead

So many people have asked us the questions, "Have you seen a picture of your son yet?, Do you get to pick him out?, When will you have him home? Why does this take so long?, etc" You would think that most of these questions would be able to be answered  fairly soon after you decide you want to adopt, but that is not the case. I wanted to give a run down of what our schedule looks like for this process:

1.)First we have to complete all of the paperwork for our home study and it has to be approved. This takes about 3 months

2.)Next we have to fill out some more forms and work on our Dossier (giant packet of info that gets sent to Ethiopia) and wait for that to get approved. This can take 3-6 months.

3.)Once our Dossier is approved we will be put on a Waiting list and given a number. Right now the numbers being given out are in the low hundreds. As families are matched with a child, you move down the numbered list. The problem is that most months there are not that many referrals (when you receive a child's picture and a brief description about them and you can accept or deny the referral) given out (lately it is in the range of about 4 referrals a month..could be less some months, could be more). For example if you are number 100 and there are an average of 4 referrals done a month, you could be on the waiting list for 25 months before you ever see your child's face come across your compter screen. This is why this process can take up to 3 years.

Ethiopia is currently in the process of getting Hague Accredited. They put certain laws in place to slow down the adoption process to make sure they are ethical and legal. They went from processing 50 Dossiers a day to only 5 a day. Now you can see why only a few families are being matched from an agency at a time.

4.)If we accept the referral we will travel to Ethiopia within 4-6 weeks of accepting and meet our child. At that point we will go to court to have the child declared as "legally" ours before a judge (if you pass).

5.)Then you have to do the dreaded part of leaving your child in Ethiopia until their paperwork is finished processing in the US. This usually takes 4-6 months. (Oh the agony..this is the part I fear the most).

6.) Once your paperwork is completed, you travel back to Ethiopia to pass Embassy and then head home with your child (FINALLY!)

So, now you can see that it is not as easy as just deciding to adopt. It is a looooong drawn out process with so much legal work, so much money and so much waiting! More than likely all of our paperwork will expire due to the long wait and we will have to update a few times during the process, which is just frustrating to think about. Our prayer is that somehow the process picks up and we won't have to wait so long, but it's all just up in the air at this point. Things could change at any moment.

We will need prayers for lots of patience during the waiting and lots of encouragement. After having 3 biological children, I thought the 9 months of waiting was so long. I have a feeling I am in for a rude awakening. But, I love knowing that God is in for the long haul, he placed this on our hearts, He'll carry us through it. Also that we have an amazing community of friends and family around us to lift us up, pray for us and see us through till that little guy is home sweet home.