Sorry I forgot to post those links that I mentioned on my last post... Here they are Jessie :)
Sign the Petition to Restore the Number of Referrals
State Department Announcement
We received an update from our FC. Things sound good so I thought I would share it with you. Thank you so much for all of your words of support and encouragement! Here's what Lauren (our family coordinator) has to say:
"We are writing to update you on the current situation in Ethiopia. While meetings between Ethiopian government officials continue, we have seen positive steps. Within MOWA, there have been significant and positive personnel changes which have resulted in overall staff turnover and changes in the adoption unit. This unit is now called the Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs (MOWCYA). We are hopeful and expectant that the new leadership will not only support processing an adequate number of favorable recommendation letters, but also implement policies that will best serve the children. Due to the staffing changes, we anticipate much transition over the next few weeks. However, we expect that once everyone is settled into their new positions, MOWCYA will work to process a higher number of recommendation letters than they currently are able to process.
We have continued to receive optimistic feedback and have seen how the Ethiopian government is very committed to adoption. I hope this information is an encouragement to your family. We will continue to update your family with any confirmed information we receive."
Keep those prayers coming!!
Love,
Rachel
Friday, March 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Romans 12:12
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
I need to post this verse ALL over our house right now. In case you haven't received a phone call, text, email, or fb message from me- this week has not brought good news. Well, I guess that's wrong to say- it's news that tests our faith. Last week Ethiopia announced they are going to reduce the number of referrals (ie- matches with parents). Reduce seems like such a simple word that doesn't match what is happening. They are reducing by 90%. So instead of matching 50 families per day they will match 5. I know that still sounds decent, 5 per day, but you have to remember there are families and agencies all over the world (we're talking thousands of families) getting on "the list" every day. So rather than looking at a 6-8 month wait, like we were thinking, our wait could be stretched to years. That means our homestudy would have to be updated yearly but also we would have LOTS of time to make sure we have saved every penny we think we'll need and paid off a few things. These changes went into effect on March 10 of this year. Last we were told, agencies and the US Embassy are trying to work things out. Apparently there have been issues with corrupt systems and so they want to be more thorough (definitely can't blame them for that!). They are concerned that not every option is being exhausted to keep the children in the country before they are being adopted out to other places.
We know all things will happen when God's plan says they will but it's hard to set aside our own expectations and feelings. Maybe this is happening so I can continue to go to Togo with Justin? Maybe this is happening because the child we would have been matched with had a disability we would not have been able to afford to treat? Maybe we are supposed to look at other avenues? At this point all I can do is throw my hands up and say "He knows" and be forced to learn to let go of control of things. I put a link below that goes to a petition if you want to sign it and another link that goes to the State Dept's announcements for what's going on in Ethiopia (Jessie- set a limit for yourself so you don't spend all day going from site to site! :) ). Please pray for the children of Ethiopia and that the government will have the wisdom to do what is best for them, no matter what that timeline means for us.
I need to post this verse ALL over our house right now. In case you haven't received a phone call, text, email, or fb message from me- this week has not brought good news. Well, I guess that's wrong to say- it's news that tests our faith. Last week Ethiopia announced they are going to reduce the number of referrals (ie- matches with parents). Reduce seems like such a simple word that doesn't match what is happening. They are reducing by 90%. So instead of matching 50 families per day they will match 5. I know that still sounds decent, 5 per day, but you have to remember there are families and agencies all over the world (we're talking thousands of families) getting on "the list" every day. So rather than looking at a 6-8 month wait, like we were thinking, our wait could be stretched to years. That means our homestudy would have to be updated yearly but also we would have LOTS of time to make sure we have saved every penny we think we'll need and paid off a few things. These changes went into effect on March 10 of this year. Last we were told, agencies and the US Embassy are trying to work things out. Apparently there have been issues with corrupt systems and so they want to be more thorough (definitely can't blame them for that!). They are concerned that not every option is being exhausted to keep the children in the country before they are being adopted out to other places.
We know all things will happen when God's plan says they will but it's hard to set aside our own expectations and feelings. Maybe this is happening so I can continue to go to Togo with Justin? Maybe this is happening because the child we would have been matched with had a disability we would not have been able to afford to treat? Maybe we are supposed to look at other avenues? At this point all I can do is throw my hands up and say "He knows" and be forced to learn to let go of control of things. I put a link below that goes to a petition if you want to sign it and another link that goes to the State Dept's announcements for what's going on in Ethiopia (Jessie- set a limit for yourself so you don't spend all day going from site to site! :) ). Please pray for the children of Ethiopia and that the government will have the wisdom to do what is best for them, no matter what that timeline means for us.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Thank you, Immigration office.
Don't you just love how quickly & efficiently our government offices process paperwork? We submitted our homestudy to the immigration office back mid January. By January 24th we received a letter stating that we had forgotten to send in payment to get our fingerprints done (which, by the way, we had done a year ago but they don't count). So, wanting to get this process done as fast as possible, we quickly go to Publix, get a money order (because that's the only thing they accept), and send it off. By February 4th we have received a receipt. Pretty impressive, right? This week Justin got a voicemail left by a lady from immigration asking if we are going to send our payment in because our time window to submit the payment is up. Um, what? Finally after playing phone tag for 3 days, he is able to talk with her. " Immigration lady: No, Mr. V we don't have record of any payment." Justin: "I'm looking at a receipt that your office sent me, it is dated 2/4 and it states we have paid everything in full and we are just waiting on your office to send us an appointment time to get our fingerprints done." Immigration lady: "You have a receipt from our office? Can you fax me a copy of it? I have no record of any payment. Receipts are done by another person in our office and it was not updated in our office." Awesome. Did I mention that as soon as they find something missing they stop looking at your homestudy until they receive it? So our homestudy has been sitting there for the past month with no one looking at it.
Oh, and then 30 minutes later we got an email from our family coordinator at AWAA saying she is leaving AWAA and taking another job in Florida. While we are happy for her, she is the one that has given preliminary approval for all of our dossier documents and as soon as immigration finishes, our family coordinator will look everything over and give the final stamp of approval for the completed dossier. Now that she is leaving, that's a completely different person instead of one person who's already seen everything. I wish our AWAA FC the best and hope she and her family are very happy in the next phase in their lives. I just wish she was leaving AFTER our DTE instead of before, selfish I know.
I know patience is necessary and God never promised any of this would be easy. It's just so frustrating when people (ie. the immigration office) don't do their jobs correctly. I mean really? Because someone didn't do an interoffice mailing of the receipt our homestudy review is going to take an extra month??? Hopefully we'll have Little E by 2012...
Oh, and then 30 minutes later we got an email from our family coordinator at AWAA saying she is leaving AWAA and taking another job in Florida. While we are happy for her, she is the one that has given preliminary approval for all of our dossier documents and as soon as immigration finishes, our family coordinator will look everything over and give the final stamp of approval for the completed dossier. Now that she is leaving, that's a completely different person instead of one person who's already seen everything. I wish our AWAA FC the best and hope she and her family are very happy in the next phase in their lives. I just wish she was leaving AFTER our DTE instead of before, selfish I know.
I know patience is necessary and God never promised any of this would be easy. It's just so frustrating when people (ie. the immigration office) don't do their jobs correctly. I mean really? Because someone didn't do an interoffice mailing of the receipt our homestudy review is going to take an extra month??? Hopefully we'll have Little E by 2012...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)