Thinking ahead to our Court Date

I think it's safe to say that our thoughts have been dominated by our upcoming court date on Wednesday. In fact, as I'm typing this, Mark is downstairs making injera. We're having Ethiopian food for dinner on Tuesday night. Ethiopia is 8 hours ahead of us in Indiana so by the time we're waking up on Wednesday morning, our case will already have been heard in the Ethiopian court. We will likely receive a phone call from our social worker sometime on Wednesday once she has received the news. We're guardedly optimistic that we will pass the first time, however, many others with our agency have been going through court two, three, even four times. We're choosing to remain hopeful that we will be successful the first time.

One of our agency's staff members will represent us in court. There are many things that need to come together for us to be successful on Wednesday: The Ministry of Women's Affairs (MOWA) must submit a letter supporting our case to adopt Simon, all of the many necessary documents must be submitted correctly with no errors in translation, people with connections to our case must be present in court and have their proper identification, and, silly as it may sound, the electricity needs to be on. We covet your prayers, good thoughts and well-wishes that all of these things come together for a successful court date.

When we do pass court, our agency's staff will begin working to get Simon's birth certificate and then his passport. Once they have those two items in hand, our agency's staff will apply for an appointment with the US Embassy in Addis Ababa. These things take about one month and then we should receive our travel call to be in Ethiopia around 6 weeks after passing court. Our agency is assigned every other Tuesday for Embassy appointments so the best case scenario, if we pass court this week, would have us in Ethiopia the last week of April.

This past Saturday, we attended an event at the Indianapolis Grace Ethiopian Church. They invited a speaker to talk about Ethiopian culture and then there was a time of fellowship. We enjoyed visiting with Dan, Jana and Xander and then we were also able to meet two other families with our agency who could be potential travel partners! It's so fun to make these connections and we are grateful to IGEC for offering these programs for adoptive families.

And later this week, on Thursday, we have another unique opportunity. The head of our agency's Ethiopia program will be in Indianapolis to speak during their annual Ethiopia Insight session. Given the pending changes that could require families to travel to Ethiopia twice as part of their adoption process, I think that this is going to be a very interesting session! She recently spent 3 weeks in Addis Ababa and I'm really excited to hear what she has to share.

So yes, it's a very Ethiopian kind of week! Thank you again for keeping Mark, Simon and me in your thoughts and prayers. We are really looking forward to becoming a family of three and hoping that a successful court date on Wednesday will bring us one step closer to our dream coming true. We can't thank you enough for your continued support and prayers.