As of tomorrow we have officially been on the wait list for a baby from Ethiopia for 14 months and have been working towards this adoption for 25 months.  Over the holidays we were faced with the news that the Ethiopian government was considering stopping all foreign adoptions.  If this were to occur then we would lose all of the money that we have paid thus far.  (Remember, we have paid smaller amounts of money to a bunch of different stuff and it is all for services that have already been performed.  See the timeline above for a breakdown of what we have paid at this point.)  We could choose to transfer to a new program, but we would have to start over in terms of cost and paperwork.  In addition, most of the other programs require extended stays in the country of origin to finalize the adoption, something that our jobs will not allow.  To sum up our situation, if this were not occur, we would not be able to afford and/or meet the requirements of another adoption.

Luckily, we received word near the end of January that Ethiopia would not stop foreign adoptions at this time.  This was a huge relief, but it doesn't mean that the end is in sight for us...at least not yet.  The unofficial wait list still has us around #80, and there were approximately 10 adoptions in the last year for our category.  This leads us to believe that we are looking at another 5-7 years of waiting before we receive a referral.  The reason for the slowdown is complicated but basically comes down to the following: 1) It takes time to make sure that an adoption is being completed ethically when dealing with limited resources 2) The United States has implemented a PAIR process for issuing visas and it takes about double the amount of time that it did in the past  3) Court in Ethiopia is closed during the rainy season and it is difficult (it is always difficult, but even more difficult) to find family members to verify an orphan's status during this time 4) More and more people are adopting from Ethiopia and so there are more people waiting than before and many people transferred to the Ethiopia program after other countries began to close 5) Agencies had to become re-certified to oversee adoptions in the country over the last year and that caused a temporary halting of referrals 6) There is an increased effort to encourage Ethiopian families to adopt orphans domestically.  These are all good things, and we are glad that we are with an ethical agency, despite the pain of the wait.

Family and friends in their desire for us to realize our dreams of becoming parents have offered up questions and suggestions about other ways to start our family while we wait.  When we started the program the current wait was 10-16 months.  As soon as we started to realize that we were looking at a much longer wait we began to pursue ways to concurrently build our family as we have been trying to become parents for nearly 5 years now.  Although we are keeping the specifics private, please know that we have pursued a number of options over the past year (some of them much further than we have told anyone) and we are not currently pursuing any other adoption or fertility treatments.  We believe that God has called us to Ethiopia and we are going to wait on Him and His timing with our family.  We hope and pray that one day we will finally get the news that we have been matched with our baby, but we are also trying to live lives where our joy is not dependent upon whether or not we ever become parents.  Thank you for praying with us through this difficult season of our lives.   Unless something changes one way or another...I will post updates every six to twelve months.