When you decide to do something that you have never done before, it's scary! You feel like you are diving head first into the unknown...but that's what you have to do...just dive in and trust that you will learn along the way what it takes to make it through. When we seriously began to research adoption, I was overwhelmed. It's like learning a new language. You hear words like dossier, referral, court dates, embassy, and many more that you have no clue what they mean, but know that they are going to be a huge part of your life over the next year. I realize that most people have no idea (just like me 4 months ago) what the adoption process is like. So here you go.....
Our Home study (a series of interviews done by the state to ensure we are able and capable of adopting a child) was completed on december 19th and we shipped it as part of our Dossier ( every important paper in our lives and many more, that have to be notarized and sent to Ethiopia court for translation) to our agency on January 3rd. Our agency will then send it to Ethiopia to be translated to Amharic. At some point hopefully 2-3 months after our dossier is sent we will receive a referral (a picture and information of a baby girl that our agency has matched us with)! We will then be submitted to court and be given a date that we will appear in the Ethiopian court to adopt our daughter(approximately 3 months after we are matched up with a baby). She will not be coming home with us on this trip though. We will have to leave her in our agency's care center for around 3 months until the US Embassy clears us to bring her home. Then we will travel to Ethiopia for a second time and go get her!
Clear as mud, right?! Hopefully this helps answer a lot of the questions we have been getting about when we will actually get her home:) The super condensed version is that we will hopefully get matched up with a baby girl in the next few months, wait 3 more months to go to Ethiopia to adopt her (but not bring her home), wait 3 more months for the US Embassy to clear us to GO GET HER!
I appreciate everyones questions and sweet encouragement more than you know. I love knowing that people are interested in what it takes to bring our baby girl home. We are so blessed to have so many supportive people in our lives who are bathing us in prayer and who have chosen to give financially as well.
