We were told by our agency last week that we should be prepared for an 8-10 month wait before we receive a referral.  It seems strange that we have to wait so long considering there are 4-6 million orphans in Ethiopia.  However, we recently found a few orphanage videos that give a glimpse of the bottleneck in Ethiopian adoption.  This video shows the Kebebe Government Children’s Orphanage.  The living conditions made us very sad.

Here is the description:

Moving moment for all of us when we visited the Kebebe Government Children’s Orphanage. The rooms that held the children had a thick, smell in the air of urine and feces. Some of the pics are difficult to see. All of these children are waiting to be adopted. There were only 2 caretakers for all of these kids. … When we asked for the name of one of the little girls in the picture, the caretakers couldn’t find it. I have this on my video that is coming soon. A tough day for all of us.

We also found a post from an adoptive mother who just brought home a baby boy.  Her son was in Bethzatha orphanage for awhile.  When she went to pick him up in Ethiopia she got to visit Bethzatha.  The living conditions were not as bad, but there are a lot of children.

Here are some of the things she described:

I am still processing my time in Ethiopia–there is really so much to process. . . As you may know, adoption requires waiting, waiting and more waiting. There’s red tape—lots of hoop-jumping and often programs change and even close at moments notice. With 143,000,000 orphans in the world–and almost 6 million of them being in Ethiopia–the wait doesn’t really make sense. BUT there is a wait.

Our agency’s orphanage can only serve so many orphans at a time–and one can’t come to our private orphanage to be matched with a forever family until another one has gone. SO–while our private run orphanage serves betweent 40-60 children, many are simply waiting on court dates to come and pass so families can travel and another bed can be opened for a child from bigger orphanages like Bethzatha to come in. (W)hile some (children) only spend a few weeks there, others have been there for years and years.

It’s hard not to wonder where our child(ren) are right now.  We pray that they are getting proper care and attention.  Families who are adopting from AGCI are praying that they pass courts and allow waiting children to be matched with loving families.  We hope you join us in praying for court hearings run smoothly and ethically so that we can bring home our child(ren) as soon as possible.