We're on "THE LIST"!!

Yesterday, before we even knew our immigration approval was in our mailbox, our case manager from our adoption agency sent us an email stating the following, ..."I JUST got your Immigration approval! Congratulations! ... right now you are Officially on the wait list for a referral!" Yippie! We're celebrating each step of the way, and we're quite pleased to be where we are at this point. BUT, now we wait.

We spoke to our case manager today. She explained the next few steps -including what our agency will be doing for us behind the scenes. They'll be sending our dossier to Olympia for state verification. Then it will be sent to Washington, DC to be processed. This takes about three weeks. From there it will finally be sent to Ethiopia where it will wait for us to receive our referral. It doesn't really matter how long it takes for this part of the process as we're still on the list just waiting for our referral.

She did give us an update as to where we are on the list. She estimated there to be approximately 12-15 families ahead of us on the list who were waiting for children from ages of 0-3 years. The families who have been waiting the longest have only been on the list since March, which means they've only been waiting 4 months so far. This was encouraging to us. Using her experience, she is guessing we may receive a referral sometime in the winter.

God knows exactly who she is and has the perfect time chosen for us to first hear about her and to finally meet her and officially bring her into our family. He knows if she's been born yet and every circumstance of her precious life. We will wait for Him to reveal His timing to us.