The Happenings

Here's what's happenin' - LOTS of great news from AWAA regarding Ethiopia:
1. Documents required for dossier no longer need to be individually notarized and certified. We can collect the rest of our docs, put them in a bundle and take care of notarization and State certification in a bundle. That saves time and money and that's a good thing.
2. This week there have been NINE referrals!!!! That's a lot of movement after quite a while of very little movement and that too is a good thing!
3. Received news today that the requirement for Ethiopian orphans to be in the orphanage care for 90 days before being referred/adopted has changed to only 60 days which means babies/children can be adopted and in their parents arms sooner and that is a WONDERFUL thing!
4. Rachel Ward, who works in AWAA's transitional home in Ethiopia, has just confirmed a new partnership with another orphanage/organization called Kingdom Vision International. Here is the link: http://kingdomvisioninternational.org/ Looks like KVI is run by an amazing group of godly people. AWAA's partnership will be a wonderful thing on many levels, but bottom line and best of all - the more orphanages AWAA partners with the faster the program can grow and go. Love that! The best thing about KVI is that it is Christ-centered and their vision and desires are in line with the heart of God!

Regarding our paperchase: Though docs no longer have to be individually notarized/certified, our case worker believes that for TX and US government purposes our home study will still need to be notarized. So - Sarah has shipped the document to Lisa in Dallas (who is head over AWA-TX) who is then having the doc notarized and then overnighted to me. I should receive the home study report copies on Monday and then I can overnight a copy to USCIS where they will process the info and send a letter to us saying we can go have our fingerprints done. Once we have our fingerprints done we will wait for the 171-h which is the last document we are waiting for. This is where many families end up waiting for a LONG time. And yet, sometimes a 171 is received surprisingly fast. Let's pray ours is FAST! Everything else has been, so why not?!
After that - we'll make copies of all the docs and then send our dossier to AWAA. They will send the dossier off for US Authentication and then on to the Ethiopian Embassy for further authentication and then FINALLY - the dossier will be shipped to Ethiopia and our official wait time will begin. At this time the wait for an infant girl from the time the dossier is sent in until the day we get a referral (pic and med info of our child) is about 7-9 months. So - if we get our paperwork shipped to Ethiopia at the end of April (just guessing here) then we could potentially receive a referral at the end of Nov, Dec or Jan. Then a court date is set in Ethiopia (while we remain in the US) that hopefully will go by without a hitch. The Ethiopian court will approve us as parents on that date (which is usually several weeks after referra) and once we have that approval we will travel to Ethiopia fairly quickly..... Of course - this is the ideal way things should play out. In international adoption you just never know. But if all went as I've described here we would be in Ethiopia anytime between January and March of '09.

That was probably more than most of you wanted to know - but for our family and friends who are trying to figure out the way things work, hopefully all the info was worthwhile.

Blessings,
Cindy