What Happens Now? and other Questions

Thank you so much for all of your excited phone calls, emails, and comments. We are still floating in the clouds. It has been an indescribable experience. Here are some answers to the questions we have been getting:

What happens now?

We have sent all of our paperwork to our agency officially accepting the referral of our baby boy. They should receive everything that they need on Monday and will inform the orphanage director that we are ready to go forward making this official. All of the international paperwork that we worked on back in the winter has been sitting in Ethiopia waiting for this day. This paperwork along with our sons paperwork will be turned into the Ethiopian court system and we will be given a court date. This can take a week or this can take two months. Once we are given a court date we just wait. The director of the orphanage goes to court in our place so we do not need to be there for court. If we pass court, we travel 2-3 weeks after. If we fail, we wait for a new court date.

Where is our little boy now?

Our little man spent a couple of days in an Ethiopian run orphanage and now is at Hannah's Hope, the orphanage run by our agency. The heart behind this orphanage is to create a safe place for orphans. They keep a three to one ratio for babies and each child has a couple of "special mothers" that care for them to provide consistency of care. I will write an entire post on Hannah's Hope later with more information.

What is his name?

We can not post his given name on our blog but we will name him John T. Pell. His given name will become his middle name. There will be a blog post coming up explaining the importance of his name.

When do we expect to travel?

It is our hope/expectation/desire to get a court date in October and travel in November. We will know more when we get a court date.

Where are we at with our finances for this adoption?

Our estimate for total adoption costs is $26,000. As of Friday, $21,000 has been paid. This leaves us with $5,000 left to be paid by October.

Thank you so much for all of you that have supported our adoption in this way! Of the $21,000 paid, $9,080 of this was through donations from family and friends! Baby John is so blessed to have you all in his life.....

**If you have sent us a donation and have not either heard from us or gotten a thank you card please let us know. We have had some issues with funds not going to our account. If you have heard from us, all of the donated money has gone toward our fees.