Like most everyone, I cannot believe that 2014 is already
coming to an end! Seems like just
yesterday we were bringing in the New Year and here we are less than a month
away from Christmas! While time seems to
be going fast in everyday life, the one aspect of our life where it feels like
time is standing still is our adoption.
When we began this process in April 2013, we were told it would take
around from 6-8 months to complete all of the paperwork needed to ship to
Ethiopia (AKA our dossier). As it
turned out, that was a very accurate timeframe for us, because 6 months later
we were at the post office shipping our dossier to our agency for them to send to
Ethiopia. Once our agency received our
paperwork, they began working on their end to prepare it for departure and on October
18, 2013 our dossier arrived in Addis Ababa, the Capital of Ethiopia.
Once we were officially DTE (dossier to Ethiopia), it was
time to begin our next countdown. At
this point in our journey, our adoption agency indicated that once we had
submitted our paperwork to Ethiopia, we would be matched with our daughter
within 18-24 months. Therefore, at that
time we anticipated we be meeting our little Amira by April 2015 at the
earliest or by October 2015 at the latest.
However, as time went on our agency has increased the wait time for
families to be closer to 36-42 months and they indicate it is possible for this
wait time to continue to increase.
Therefore, at this point and time we are have no idea what the exact
timeframe will be when we will be united with our little princess on the other
side of the world. Typically, when
people ask when we will be bringing our little girl home, I usually say “we
have a long road ahead of us but God is in control.”
Plain and Simple....God IS in control.
He always has been and always will be.
He knows the exact day, the exact hour, the exact minute we will be
brought together as a family. And while
I wish that day was today, his timing is perfectly planned. He is watching over our journey and our family…all
5 of us. So until that day comes, we will
continue to move forward and pray for guidance and wisdom for our journey. We will also pray for Amira, for her safety and
that she knows she is loved by a family that has never seen her face and a God who knows every hair on her beautiful little head.
That all being said…we are currently reaching the point in
our journey when our paperwork begins to expire. Because of the long wait times for adoptions
in Ethiopia, we are given the option to either let our paperwork expire or keep
it up to date. The benefit of letting
everything expire is that it will save a little cash in the long run. However, once we are matched with our
daughter, we would not be able to move forward with our adoption until
everything has been updated. Also from
what I understand, updating expired paperwork is almost like starting the
paperwork process over again. Because of
these reasons, we have chosen to keep our paperwork up to date. It may cost us a little more in the long run
but we do not want any additional set-backs, such as trying to quickly renew
paperwork, to extend our wait of meeting our daughter. Therefore, this past week Nic and I visited
our friends at United States Citizen and Immigration Services to update our
fingerprints. We passed J . The next step will be to begin the process of
updating our home study, this will be a little more in depth then sticking our
finger on a computer screen. However, we
will cross that bridge when it arrives in January 2015 as we are taking one
step at a time. We have learned in this process the importance of celebrating every victory, no matter how small. God is good. :)
Thank you all for your continued support and prayers. We will continue to keep you updated as we
move forward in God’s time. Have a very
Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year!!!
GOD BLESS!!!
On our way to get fingerprinted for the second time. :)
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