Good News

Our social worker told us that when they had a match for us that she would call with "good news".  Well, we have our good news!!!

We are matched with a 7 1/2 year old boy from Ethiopia.  His name is Kidane.  (pronounced Ki-don-ee, the i is short).  I wish I could show you pictures but that is against Ethiopia laws.  Yes, we have a match, but we still have to fly over to Ethiopia, appear in their courts and make it official.  

When do we fly??? Well, we don't know.  They said it is taking about 4 or 5 months right now to get a court date.  Soooo, we wait again. Once we do fly over the first time and do the court thing we come home alone.  Then we wait one more month while the court "processes" the papers. Then we fly over for the 2nd trip and bring him home! 

I know many of you are asking why only one?  I thought you were adopting siblings?  Well, we were asking for siblings.  We knew there was a need for siblings but it was for sib. groups of 3 or more.   Then we found out the next greatest need was for older boys (either in a sibiling group or single child).  Almost all of the older children in sib. groups were 10 - 14 years old; too old for our family since you have to keep birth order.  So God led us to Kidane.

At this time we don't want to share any more specific information until he is able to understand it himself. Right now we don't know how much English he understands if any. We don't want him  to hear about himself from others. 

YES

We decided to move forward with an older child adoption.  We started out wanting to adopt a sibling group.  The need in Costa Rica was for families to adopt sibling groups of 3 or more.  We were only approved to adopt a group of two so because of that and other reasons we switched countries.  We felt the needs in Ethiopia were much greater overall.  So we wanted to adopt a sibling group of two from Ethiopia.  Well the need is even greater for older boys.  They are waiting for families.  The literature says it is harder, older children have experienced more trauma.  They may have more attachment issues, more behavior issues, more everything.  The social workers keep asking us "are you sure? do you really want to do this? it is not going to be easy.".  We said YES, YES, and we didn't ask for the easy road.  How many times must we say YES?  But we know they want to make sure the child/children aren't going into a family that will give up on them.

We will never give up.  We are in it for the long haul.  Yes, we want to give love, unconditional love, to an older boy.  We just ask for all of you, our friends and family to keep us in your prayers.   I just can't wait to bring him home.  Yes, it will be work.  Who said parenting was supposed to be easy?  Yes, it might hurt.  Giving birth hurts, but it is so worth it!

Say YES today to whatever God is asking you to do.  You won't regret it.