For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. Hebrews 10:36
We got our last signature today!!!! Ezekiel will be coming home :):):) We hope that we will hear tomorrow when our court date is scheduled. From there, we can schedule our travel dates. Right now it is looking like it will be sometime in April. We are still kind of in shock that this is even happening! It has been such a long process! God has been faithful through every step.
For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. Hebrews 10:36
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We got a surprising e-mail today. We sort of got our final signature we were waiting for. The final signature is a two step process. First the processor has to sign off on the case, and then gives it to the supervisor, who does the final signature. This is normally done in one day. However, that was not true with our case. The processor signed off on our case and gave it to the supervisor....who is gone for 10 days!!!! UGH! However, we feel super good that our case is almost complete! Looking forward, the supervisor is suppose to be back in the office on March 21. IF (a big IF) he signs right away, we will be assigned a court case in a few days, then we may be travelling in April. We have no idea IF the supervisor would sign right away when he returns, or not. The sooner the better for us! So please join us in prayer that we receive the "rest of the signature" as soon as the supervisor returns. Then we can plan out when to go get our precious EZEKIEL!!!!! So this happened today!!! Our PAIR (pre-adoption immigration review) letter came in the mail. This means the U.S. approves Ezekiel to come home. :) One step closer, to actually bringing him home. Before I get to far ahead of myself...our phone interview happened, and they US Embassy approved our case. Therefore, we get the PAIR letter.
We still need one thing before we can go to travel to bring our baby home. The Ministry of Women and Children and Youth Affairs (MOWYCA) still needs to give their consent on the case. (Ethiopian side of things) . There is no timeline for this part. We are hoping that it happens soon though...it is the ONE thing standing in the way of us going to get Ezekiel and bring him home FOREVER! Our agency recently contacted the embassy on our behalf regarding our interview on March 16. They requested that a phone interview be considered instead of an actual in person interview, in light of the delays that have happened in our case. THE EMBASSY AGREED!!! The phone interview is scheduled for March 3. :) We are asking for prayers that the interview takes place, and that the phone number of the interviewee is a correct and accurate number! (Ethiopia is ahead of us in time, so please pray tonight) Matthew 17:20 (NIV)Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” I wish I had a more positive report to bring everyone, but I simple do not. There has not been much movement on the adoption. Our PAIR (immigration review) is still not complete. We thought this part would have been completed months ago, but now the embassy is requesting another interview with someone in our case. The court date for that interview is not until March 16! We are still waiting for signature from MOWYCA as well.
Our agency was recently in Ethiopia, and we have received some new pictures of Ezekiel. Around the same time, another adoptive mommy went to visit her baby in Ethiopia. She was able to visit Ezekiel, and gave us a video of him saying mama and papa in English, talk about a heart breaker!!! He is simply the sweetest little boy there is! We are asking for continued prayers to wrap up our case. It has been 7 months since we accepted our referral of Ezekiel! We thought we would have had him home already, and right now, there are no immediate plans for him to come home :( Everyday gets tougher, and tougher for us. This summer will mark four years in our adoption process...4 years!!! Please join us in DAILY prayers for our little man across the world. Thanks. It has been awhile since I have updated this, and unfortunately we are in the same spot. :( We still do not have our PAIR (pre-adoption immigration review) confirmed even though all interviews have taken place. Our agency has tried contacting the embassy to get an update and they are not responding to our agencies e-mails. We are also still waiting for the oh so important MOWYCA consent. There are always rumors flying around about what MOWYCA is, or is not doing. We know that they are not signing off on a lot of cases. However, the good news is that we have heard that there are two cases from another agency that recently DID receive their MOWYCA consent. So this means that they are indeed signing off on cases, just not in great numbers. Our agency is taking a trip to Ethiopia and hope to meet with some officials while there. We are hoping and praying that these meetings will make a difference in our case. We also have a friend that is going to Ethiopia, and is going to try to visit Ezekiel while she is there. She is also going to deliver some of the donations we have collected along the way. ...and also she will deliver a little gift to Ezekiel :) So we are very anxious to get Ezekiel home, but as of now, we will still have to be patient. Please join us in prayer that paperwork will be completed and consents given so we can bring our boy home.
Well we have good and bad news. The bad news is that our court date on Christmas did not happen. We have another (4th if anyone is counting) court date scheduled for January 11. We are hopeful that MOWCYA (ministry of women, children and youth affairs) will actually give their consent BEFORE our court date, and then on the 11th our second court date would be scheduled, which would be our travel dates. Our good news is that we found our that our PAIR (pre-adoption immigration review)is underway and we should be getting our PAIR approval shortly after everything is completed!!! We need the PAIR approval letter in hand before we could travel. This was one of the two things we have been waiting for! We are so glad that one of the two things we need is happening! This is great news and it is wonderful to finally have some good news for a change. :) PLEASE PLEASE continue to pray that MOWCYA will give their consent quickly (even before the 11th) and we can get Ezekiel home!!! Wishing everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR! Sorry I did not update the blog earlier...many of you now know the latest news. Our last court date did not happen...again :( We did get rescheduled...again but this time not until December 25, Christmas Day. Christmas in Ethiopia is not until January, so the date should not cause any further delays...hopefully!!! Other news we have found out: -MOWCYA can give their consent on our case on ANY GIVEN DAY, not just on the scheduled court day. So we are now praying they we get our consent BEFORE our court date, then our travel days will be set at our court date. -Our immigration paperwork from the US has now been passed onto Ethiopia. Now Ethiopia will conduct their investigation on our case. This is suppose to be happening right now. We will be e-mailing next week to get an update on the process. -Ezekiel is still healthy and about the same size as the day of our referral. So he is not losing tons of weight or anything, which is a blessing! We also found out he is suppose to be fully potty trained :) which might help the travels home, if it is true. Ezekiel also turned four on December 11. We had a small little get together at our house in his honor. It was a bummer that we could not get him home in time for his birthday. We know he is being well taken care and being loved while we can not be with him A sweet lady who is adopting from our agency was recently in Ethiopia doing some work. She was able to give us some new pictures...oh they are so sweet. He was very smiley and was playing with some play-doh in some other pictures. She also fell in love with Ezekiel. She said he has a good attention span, he is thoughtful, curious, and engaged. All great things to hear :) Going forward we are still waiting on the same things from the last post (MOWCYA consent and Immigration paperwork to be completed). If you could pray that these things happen without problems, and there are no further delays, we would appreciated it. THANKS All we wish for Christmas is to bring Ezekiel home!!! Unfortunately, we are most likely not getting that wish. Our first court date on November 13, did not happen. We still do not have an answer as to why it did not happen. It is not uncommon to have court dates not happen. However, we did get
rescheduled for November 30, which is earlier than expected. So we are praying like never before, that our re-do court date actually happens. If you would like to join us in prayer, just remember that Ethiopia is 8 hours ahead of us in time :) Once we get the clearance to proceed from the first court date, we still need clearance from the US immigration side as well. Our paperwork was delivered to the US immigration office, it just has not been processed yet. Where do we go from here??? The following is an outline of the rest of our adoption: November 30 court date- MOWCYA (Ministry of Women, Children, Youth Affairs) (Ethiopia) gives us clearance to proceed with our adoption ---we need this to happen in order to schedule travel dates Date???? -USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) finishes our paperwork and gives us the letter that we need to travel Date????-Our second court date is scheduled (typically (if there is such a thing anymore) 4-6 weeks after first completed court date. The second court date =TRAVELLING TO BRING HOME EZEKIEL :) If we are lucky we could be looking at January to travel to being home our boy. As you probably know by now, that is an estimate and nothing is ever for sure about adoption...except that we love this little boy and are patiently (most of the time) waiting to go meet him and have him join our family forever. Please join us is praying that we can get Ezekiel home as soon as possible. John 14:18 I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you! A quick update on the adoption process. Since we accepted our referral of Ezekiel, we had some paperwork to complete. We completed the paperwork and sent that off to the USCIS. A few weeks later we received an RFE (request for more evidence) which is quite normal. We have to correct or add in some more documentation for our case, on the US side of things. A number of the documents were not fully translated into English, or the orphanage needs to provide a missing documents etc...Nothing that Seth and I can really work on. Anyways, all that paperwork MUST BE completed by the beginning of December and submitted again to the USCIS. Our agency has passed along 2 of the 6 items we need so far. So little by little we are collecting the needed documents. Once we have them all, we send them off again. Then the USCIS can do one of two things. Number one they can issue another RFE, and we do the whole process again, or number two they can give us our official letter, basically saying go pick up your boy!!! We obviously are hoping for the the second option. :)
On the Ethiopian side of things...there are going to be two court cases in our process. The first court date we do not attend. The second court date is when Seth and I are in Ethiopia with Ezekiel. The good news is we have been set up with our first court date on November 13. This is basically MOWYCA (Ministry of women, youth,and children's affairs) giving their consent for our case to move forward. The unfortunate thing about the first court date is, that they are often cancelled and rescheduled quite frequently. Without the first court date we can not travel, so we are praying that the court date doesn't get cancelled. We have been able to receive a few pictures of Ezekiel which warms my heart tremendously!!! We can not share these photos online until we pass court in Ethiopia. He looks so cute and truly looks happy and healthy, which makes this mama's heart overflow. Our agency is actually in Ethiopia right now. So they are stopping at his orphanage and loving on him. We were able to send along some pictures of our family to help prepare Ezekiel. The kids also picked out a stuffed animal to send to him as well. We have been starting to prepare our house for Ezekiel and answering a thousand questions from the kids :) We have been accepting donations to bring to Ethiopia when we travel. We are humbled by the graciousness of friends and family. We have about 40 bottles of cough medicine, 40+ bottles of children's/infant ibuprofen, donated clothes, donated soccer balls etc... for all the children!!!! We already have one suitcase full of donations!!! THANK YOU. If you are considering still donating, we would suggest formula and or diapers as that is a great need in many orphanages. So what is next... Once the USCIS is alright with our paperwork they will issue us our "go ahead" letter. When that is issued we will figure out travel. The first court date in Ethiopia must be completed BEFORE we travel. Everyone wants to know the date we travel. We are not sure yet, but we are hoping before the end of the year...fingers crossed. PRAYER REQUESTS ***Ezekiel stays healthy and his heart is prepared for a huge change in his life. ***That our first court date on November 13 HAPPENS ***That our paperwork on the US side of things is wrapped up quickly ***Preparing our hearts and minds for a little boy who does not speak English to become part of our lives FOREVER :) |
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February 2016
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