Elephant in the Room

The past few weeks there’s been an elephant in our midst. It’s something Boz and I both know is there, but something we don’t really want to talk about…. but something we think about quite a bit (and DO talk about on occasion)…. If you’re waiting for your referral, you probably know what I’m talking about already ~ or you’ll have that “Oh, that!” response in a second.

We’re talking about the dreaded Court Closures.

That’s right. Ethiopia gets a terrible rainy season every year and the courts actually close down for about a month or two. It’s too early to tell yet when it’ll be (believe me, I’ve already been bugging our family coordinator about this!!), but it’s usually around August/September. During the rainy season, the roads become so bad that the court employees are not able to get to work (keep in mind, this is a third world country), and the birth families are not able to travel to the city for the court hearings. So everything shuts down.

Do you see where I’m going with this?? If we don’t get our referral… AND. PASS. COURT. …before the rainy season starts and the whole court system comes to a grinding halt…. we’re kinda screwed. Screwed in the sense that it’ll be an additional 1-2 month wait and we most likely won’t be bringing little man home until close to Christmas. *tears*

Knowing that our son is on the other side of the world kills us. We just want to bring him home. HOWEVER, we also UNDERSTAND the reasons why it’s taking so long. There’s a process we have to go through, and we respect that. In a weird way, we even LIKE that. I actually tend to get a bit defensive when friends/family tell me that “there are 5 million orphans, you should be able to go there, grab a kid and go.” I KNOW these people are saying it as a way of showing us they’re on our side (and are commiserating with us)… but we constantly feel like we need to explain WHY it’s taking so long (because we SEE why it is). It’s just hard to explain (especially when they just want to say their peace and be done with it).

Once we get the call it’ll take a few weeks for us to officially accept the referral then for the paperwork to get back to Ethiopia. Once they do their thing (we’ll know more on this part of the process once we do get our referral), they’ll set us up with a court date. And just like the US courts… you can’t expect to get in the next day. ;-) Once we have the date set, we’ll start collecting donations for the orphanage (we’ll post more on that later if anyone is interested in helping out). We’ll fly to Ethiopia, meet our SON (!!) and will go before the judge. Lord willing ALL of the paperwork will be there, and we’ll pass on the first try. There’s a lot that don’t (some have had multiple court dates!). Sometimes there’s a document missing, or a family member didn’t show up, or they request something that you didn’t need at the time but do now… so many different reasons why we might not pass the first time. We’ll worry about that later. Right now, we’re just trying to get our phone to ring. LOL!! :~D

I know I got a little “rambly” at the end, but our main prayer (for those who want to pray for us!) is that we’ll get the call SOON, so that we HOPEFULLY miss out on the rainy season. ** On a positive ~ Even though the courts close, the U.S. Embassy will remain open** This is good because if we do get our referral and pass court, no matter the weather, we can still fly back for our Embassy appointment (after which..... we fly home as a family of three!).

We know God has a plan for our family, and we know when the timing is right, it’ll happen…. But I don’t think it hurts to get a bunch of people praying for it to happen SOONER rather than LATER.