Eleven months . . . and counting

Actually it is more along the lines of fourteen months if you count the three months of paperwork. Our dossier has officially been in Ethiopia eleven months as of today. The waiting sometimes can get very frustrating, especially when the wait was only 4-6 months for a referral when we began this process. It has now almost doubled.

There are numerous reasons why the wait has lengthened. Ethiopia has become the "hotspot" for adoption and therefore more families are "waiting" like us. The Ethiopian government and US Embassy have instituted new guidelines and rules to make the adoptions more transparent to keep the agencies on the "up and up" and dissuade illegal practices---in the meantime adding more of a "wait" to the process. Our agency also has changed the way they go about giving out referrals. They used to give out referrals prior to all of the child's paperwork being complete and then scheduling the court dates farther out. Now they complete the child's paperwork and have them "court ready" prior to referring the child to a family. This lengthens the wait for the referral but shortens it slightly waiting for the court date. Now that both parents have to travel for the court date, it is anyone's guess if this will further lengthen the process.

Every year the Ethiopian courts close during the rainy season for about 6-8 weeks. This is usually sometime from August to October. If we do not receive a referral by end of May or perhaps beginning of June we will not be able to have our court date before they close. This could mean an additional 6-8 week wait and not going for court until October or later. This was not even a concern of mine when we started the adoption as the wait for a referral was only 4-6 months, leaving us plenty of time to make court before they closed this year. Now with the longer wait, there is a very good possibility that we will not make the closure.

They say that everything happens in God's own time. The child that is meant for our family will come to us when he is supposed to. Why is it so hard, though, to accept?


"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain."