His Mother

I lay in bed awake at night thinking about our son. Our sweet baby boy that is almost certainly been born and is probably tucked into bed with several other children in an orphanage. It is my hope that he has already arrived at Hannah's Hope, the orphanage that is run by our agency. I imagine him exploring his new environment and being loved on by the special mothers that make Hannah's Hope a safe place to be for orphaned children. As I think of him, my mind automatically goes to his birth mother, her possible circumstances and what she must be feeling having just given up a most precious gift of her child. Either by choice or by necessity, this must be one of the hardest moments in her life. Her body probably still shows some signs of the pregnancy. Daily reminders of the pain she has endured. Chances are that AIDS or some other disease has weakened her to the point of being unable to care for her sweet baby. She looks to those around her for help to find that everyone else is also in this same plight. What kind of world do we live in where a mother is not able to care for her baby? Where one country has so little in terms of basic needs while another country bursts with wealth? Where one country is being destroyed by a disease that another country has the drugs to subdue? These are the thoughts that I struggle with on a daily basis. What can be done so that less mothers have to make this enormous sacrifice? What can I do to help not only the children but the mothers as well?

I yoyo between the feelings of excitement and sorrow as I look ahead to the amazing gift of life that our family is about to receive but also reflect on the sacrifices and injustice that have occurred to make this gift a reality.

Unofficially Number One

I swore that I was not going to post any unofficial numbers as it would drive me crazy. I also swore to myself that I would not spend hours "blog stalking" to find out if we had moved up the list. I broke my promise. Thanks to my massive amount of time blog stalking, I discovered today that we are unofficially number one on the boy list. This is exciting news that we couldn't keep to ourselves. Hope to have even more exciting news in the near future.

What Happens from Here??

We found out we were number 2 on the boy list the day before we left for a week long beach vacation with my family which is why we haven't really posted much in the last couple weeks. Needless to say, we were overjoyed to find this out and it is still keeping us pretty excited when we look at each other each day and say "Number 2, can you believe it??"

So what happens now??

1.) We wait to get a call from our case worker, Christy, letting us know that she has a baby boy to introduce us to. This could happen tomorrow, this could happen a week from now, this could happen two months from now.

2.) When we get the call, we will be provided with all of the information they have about our little boy. Pictures, videos, medical information, family background. We will be sent an email and overnighted a hard copy of all of this information.

3.) We will then send the medical information to an international physician who reviews it and conferences with us to answer questions and explain the information given.

4.) Once we send our acceptance paperwork to our adoption agency, our dossier (international paperwork) will be turned into the Ethiopian court system with a request for a court date.

Steps 1-4 happen very quickly, normally within a week.

5.) We wait for the Ethiopian court system to grant us a court date. These are given out as quickly as a month from submission or as long as three months. The courts will close in Ethiopia for the rainy season during August and September so this could slow things down for us getting a court date.

6.) On our court date, a representative from our adoption agency goes to court for us. If we pass court, our little boy is officially ours. If we don't pass court, we wait for another court date (normally given out within a month of the first one)

7.) Once we pass court, we travel two weeks later!!

Our Estimated Timeline (this of course could change drastically):

Referral of baby boy: August
Court Date: November
Travel: November or early December

July Referral List Number

We got our official numbers today and flew up the list this month. We are officially number......



on the boy list and number 20 on the girl list.

This means we could get a referral any day!!! (or it could take a couple months) We are so close.....

Thanks to the support of family and friends, we have been given $7,968 toward our adoption with $8,032 left to go.

Some Thoughts As We Wait

As the weeks go on, and the paperwork process is over, I have had a lot more time to reflect on our upcoming adoption. When John and I set out to grow our family through adoption, our hearts were set on becoming home to a child that needed a family. We were not set on what country this child would come from, whether domestic or foreign, but instead on finding where the need was and responding. Our decision to adopt from Ethiopia was based on the need within the country for families to adopt orphans and the ability for us to move through the correct channels to make this happen (see earlier post on why Ethiopia). We did not look up the statistics on orphans in Ethiopia nor did we see a video or hear a talk that compelled us to choose Africa. We just knew we wanted to be a family for an orphan and looked for how we could make this happen.

While my heart has always ached for children that do not have loving and supportive homes, I have never been particularly moved by any specific group of orphans. As the months go on, I have found my heart begin to grow not only for the child that we will be bringing home from Ethiopia, but for all of the others that will remain in institutions, desperate for a family to love them the way they deserved to be loved. The book that I mentioned in the last post, "there is no me without you", has served to really educate me about Ethiopia and the circumstances around the influx of orphans in this country. Here are some of the questions that I have had that I felt were answered through reading this book:

Why does Ethiopia have so many orphans? Wouldn't it be better for them to stay and be raised by Ethiopian parents instead of white Americans?

Ethiopia has so many orphans because of the AIDS pandemic. According to this book, "Historically, close kinship ties in our [Ethiopia] country meant that there were very few orphans as orphaned children were raised by their extended families. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has destroyed so many of our families that the possibility no longer exist to absorb all our Ethiopian orphans."

Is adoption the answer? What about poverty and the AIDS crisis?

No, adoption is not the answer for all of the orphans in Africa. Keeping the parents alive to care for their children is the answer. But for those children that have lost their parents, or their parents are not able to care for them long term, adoption is a way to give hope to individual children. The world has begun to respond to the AIDS crisis in Africa and it is our hope that there will be less and less orphans in need of a home. Until then, we want to do what we can for at least one child.

Doesn't a mother with AIDS mean a child with HIV?

Without medication, one in every four children will test positive for HIV if their mother is a carrier. With medication, this percentage is only 2%.

I will again highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to read a novel that gives amazing insight into the life of orphans and the AIDS epidemic in Africa. I hope to continue to learn more about what we can do for the orphans around the globe as we believe that every child should know the love of a parent on a daily basis.

there is no me without you

I have just started reading this book and already can't put it down. It was highly recommended to me by several families that have or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia and I am sooooo glad that I have finally picked it up to read. It is the true story of an Ethiopian woman that saw the need to love and care for the orphans around her and took it upon herself to help. It is written in story form but is full of Ethiopian history and information regarding the AIDS epidemic in Africa. I highly recommend that you read this book and would be happy to pass it along once I am finished with it (at this rate probably tomorrow). I will post some of the quotes and ideas from the book soon but need to get back to my reading before my daughter wakes up.....

Garage Sale A Success

We woke up at 5:30 AM to put out all of the garage sale items and had our first customer at 6:15. Why anyone wants to get up that early to look at other peoples junk I have no idea. We had our yard covered and had a lot of people show up for the sale. Thanks to all of the donations of goods, we made.......

$588!!!

Special thanks for Lee and Stacey, Kristen and Justin and Will and Vicki for coming out to help us set up and tear down. Also to Ashley who did an amazing job babysitting Emma during the sale (even got her to go down for her nap by herself!)

Thanks to the support of family and friends, we have been given $7,968 toward our adoption with $8,032 left to go.