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.

After many long months, and piles of paperwork, we finally have a number! We received the news just a few hours ago, and here it is! Our number for a baby boy is…

Our number for a sibling group is…

We are so happy to finally be at this point. There will be a lot more waiting, for sure, but having numbers makes it seem a little more bearable. Now here’s to hoping that we move up the list quickly!

Image credits to tillwe and Jorge Franganillo

The past few months have consisted of the “great paper chase.”  We heard from our case worker on Friday and she said everything was approved except for one of the letters of recommendation.  Our friend needs to make minor revisions to the letter and resend it.  After that point our case worker will contact us and we will get our NUMBERS.  Even though I was really hoping for numbers on Friday, I am relieved to know we don’t have to make a lot of other revisions.  Our case worker said that we are very lucky because most families have to make many revisions.  The required documents included:

• Letter of commitment
• Birth certificates
• Marriage certificate
• Passport photos
• Federal background check results
• Local background check results
• Employer verification letters
• Physicals
• Financial statement
• Letters of recommendation
• Power of attorney
• Homestudy
• Photos of us and our apartment

We hope to announce our numbers very soon. . .

As part of the adoption process, April and I are assigned educational videos to watch. So far we have got a lot of good information out of them, especially because we are quizzed at the end which makes us more attentive. Two themes in particular have made an impression on me, and those are the need to surround our child with as much racial diversity as reasonably possible, and to learn how to deal with the realities of being a multi-racial family.

The first one seems to present a conflict. There is diversity in some parts of Utah, but many people believe that it is accompanied by higher violent crime rates. There may be some truth to this, but it is by no means the rule. Now I am seeing that the place we choose to live will have a bigger impact than I thought. There are probably a few ways we could facilitate the diversity: enrolling our child in a racially diverse school and extracurricular activities where there are other kids of African descent. I really want to get involved with other Ethiopian locals, whether they be other adopted children or adults. I’ve seen a group on Facebook where a group like this meets every so often. And I know that there are groups outside of Utah where Ethiopian adopted children are brought together for yearly reunions. We’ll be sure to participate in things like that.

The educational videos have also made me realize that our child’s life experience will be very different than mine was growing up. He will have to deal with prejudice, feelings of abandonment, cultural struggles, and other things that I never experienced. There will be lots of people who mean well but will make dumb comments in our child’s presence. There will be others who won’t mean well, and I know already that it will make me angry. There are good and bad ways for me to deal with stuff like that, and blowing up in someones face isn’t one of them.

I think April and I will have to learn that we can’t fix the issues that will come up. Racism will exist, and we just have to help him respond in the best way we can. It will take some practice, especially at calming ourselves so we can help in the most effective ways. It’s just an interesting aspect of parenting that is unique to adoptive families, but as long as we know that it takes work, I think we’ll do alright.

There is a lot more to learn about the best ways to parent an adopted child. I’m excited that we have learned so much already, and I look forward to all the other lessons that will come.

Note: The pictures I use for my posts have nothing do with anything. I just like them. The above pic is from this artist’s site, which I happen to like a lot. That is all.