Our Dossier Is In Ethiopia!!!!

Exciting News!!! Our dossier arrived in Ethiopia today. It is just so exciting to know that it has arrived safely. It is a very humbling feeling to know that it is now going to be touched and reviewed by Ethiopian hands. It brings us such joy to know that God is guiding us on this journey and he already has the perfect plan designed for us. We just get to wait and see where the road leads us. It usually takes a few days before our in country representative is able to pick up the package. We are still staying positive with the current time lines that we have been given by our agency. Hopefully within 7-9 months we will have a referral and then travel to Ethiopia a couple of months later. We want to thank all of you who have been praying for us on this journey and we ask that you continue to pray for us as our paperwork begins the review process. Thanks for following along on our journey!!

Our Dossier Has Left The United States

We are officially DTE "Dossier To Ethiopia" today. We got an email from our agency today and we have a fed-ex tracking number for our dossier package. We are excited to be finished with our paperwork and be able to begin the "waiting" stage. Right now the estimated wait time for a referral is 7-9 months. There is always a possibility this wait time can increase due to the number of families that are adopting from Ethiopia but we are going to stay positive and hope for 9 months. We hopefully only have 36 more Fridays until we will get a referral!! Thank you for all of your prayers that have guided us so far on this journey. We will let you know when it has arrived.

Our Dossier Has Arrived At AWAA

We got an email yesterday from our agency letting us know that they received our dossier and it had arrived safely in one piece. She said that if we did not hear back from her yesterday with a problem then she will be taking it to be authenticated and approved at the U.S. Dept. of State and the Ethiopian Embassy this week. If there are no problems there it will be sent to Ethiopia on Friday. We will receive an email on Friday with a Fed-Ex tracking number so that we can keep track of the package until it arrives in Ethiopia. It is such a wonderful feeling to know that we are so close to beginning the "waiting" stage!!

Our Dossier Is On The Fed Ex Truck Waiting To Be Delivered

After several bumps on our road to getting our documents certified we received them in the mail last Friday from a wonderful lady at our Secretary of State's office. I now realize that this added delay was just part of a perfect plan that God has designed for us and our baby girl in Ethiopia. I overnighted our dossier to AWAA yesterday and I just checked the status of the package and it says that it is on the Fed Ex truck to be delivered. We pray that all of our paperwork will look good and if so it will get authenticated and then will be shipped out of the United States on Friday on its way to Ethiopia. We ask that you pray for this piece of our journey to be completed. Once our dossier is submitted to Ethiopia the estimated wait time for a referral is 7-9 months.

Families In Ethiopia Now

There are several families that are in Ethiopia now being united with their children. They have several photos that have been posted and they will instantly bring tears to your eyes. Please pray for them while they are in Ethiopia and for safety when they travel home. -Kidd Family -West Family -Cordell Family -Gardner Family There are also four families that are set to have court dates today. I ask that you also pray for them that they will pass court today and be able to soon travel to Ethiopia to pick up their children.

The Never Ending Paperwork Process

My plan was to go to Springfield last week to get our documents certified so that we could send them to our agency but I was unable to. We have to fax our dossier documents to our agency for review before we can have them certified and unfortunately we are still waiting to hear back. I cannot go to Springfield until I know that all of our documents are ok and can be certified. In addition to this I just found out this week that one of the documents that we were told could be certified in IL cannot be so I had to overnight this document to Virginia and pray that they will certify it quickly and Fed-Ex the document to our agency hopefully within the next week. I do know that our agency only has one person right now working very hard for all of the families in the Ethiopia program. I just have to keep reminding myself that each of these small delays are just a result of God working on the little details of our baby that he has already chosen for us in Ethiopia. Right now our program coordinator is in Ethiopia and they are having several power outages because of the lack of rain that they have had which is causing a decrease in the amount of power that can be used. Because of these power outages many families have not been able to receive referrals and some families have had delays in court. We ask that you pray for the power to be restored and for us to receive the ok that we can have our documents certified and we can finally have the status of DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia).

Our Document Has Arrived

I have been very behind on posting lately but I wanted to let everyone know that our last document has finally arrived!!! We have to have everything approved by our agency and then I can take our documents to Springfield which I am hoping to do on Thursday or Friday to be certified. As soon as they are certified then I will Fedex them to our agency. This means that all of our documents will be in Ethiopia in just a few weeks and then our wait will begin. We will be counting Fridays again like we did when Travis was overseas-they seem to go so much faster!!!