Why Adopt from Ethiopia?

I recently read an amazing book entitled "There Is No Me Without You" by Melissa Fay Greene. This is a book about a middle class Ethiopian woman whose home became a refuge for hundreds of orphans. She unfortunately passed away earlier this year leaving many of those children behind. I found several interesting statistics regarding Ethiopia and Africa in this book which I thought would be beneficial to share. I thought it would at least give you an idea of the needs in Ethiopia and Africa.

*2/3 of school age children in Ethiopia are not in school.
*59% of adults in Ethiopia cannot read.
*81% of Ethiopians live on less than $2 per day.
*26% of Ethiopians live on less than $1 per day.
*Up to 20% of Ethiopian's 65 million people are not able to eat at least one time per day.
*In 2000 AIDS/HIV had killed 21 million people including 4 million children in Africa.
*In 2006 4.7 million Africans needed life saving AIDS/HIV drugs and only 500,000 had them.
*Approximately 6,600 Africans die each day from AIDS.
*In 2006 is was estimated that 4.7 million Africans needed life saving AIDS drugs and only 500,000 received them.

We recognize that adoption is not for everyone, but there are other ways to help if you feel obliged. I'd be happy to help you find a way to make a difference to one or many in Ethiopia.

Pink or Red?

Oh, two year olds! What fun, eh? Well we rarely have those typical "two year old days", but the last couple days have been very trying. So here's one of the things which happened yesterday.

The morning started out by the girls asking me to paint their toe nails, which they absolutely LOVE. Abigail always wants pink and Emma always wants red. I, without any objections, obliged and proceeded to paint their toe nails. They also requested I paint their finger nails, but we discussed that we could do that another day instead.

Later in the day, while I was sending a quick email, Emma came running up to me holding the bottle of red nail polish asking me to open it for her. I promptly explained that I wouldn't open it for her, as it wasn't something to play with. Unsuspecting, together Emma and I proceeded to the back of the house to see what Abigail was up to. As I entered our bedroom I saw Abigail sitting on the carpet holding the pink bottle of nail polish in her left hand and the finger nail polish brush in her right hand. Then I noticed she had fingernail polish all over her right foot, on both of her legs and on her left thumb and finger. Oh boy! I promptly took it away from her and gave her directions to not touch anything as I began pulling out the polish remover so we could begin the clean up. I was a bit frustrated, but not angry, as I was actually laughing on the inside. So with Abigail in a frozen position I ran to get the camera to capture the moment.

Then I realized that the fingernail polish was also on the carpet -in several places, and also on her shirt and shorts. So we cleaned it up as best we could. I was quite surprised to find that finger nail polish remover removes polish from carpet, but not from clothes. Interesting eh? After the clean up was pretty much done we began having the conversation about how only Mommy opens the finger nail polish and that it's not for them to play with. I remained calm and spoke to them on their level. Just to confirm they were understanding, I brought up the conversation later in the evening and they were prompt to explain that only Mommy opens the nail polish and that it's a No-No to play with it without Mommy.

So this was just part of our day, but you get the point. I was however remembering the things I was thankful for as I was cleaning up the mess.

1) I was thankful that it was Abigail who actually got the bottle open and not Emma, as Emma is much, ummm, shall we say messier.

2) I was thankful that Abigail only likes the PINK nail polish, as the red would have been much more difficult to clean up.

3) I was thankful that I wasn't angry and could actually find great humor in the situation while it was happening. Boy have I come a long way in the last few years, eh?

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.

I-171H Received!

After anxiously checking the mail every day for the past week, our I-171H form finally arrived today. My neighbor thought I was crazy because he heard me yelling and dancing around with joy, although he still has no idea what all the hoopla was about. I will fax a copy of the form to our agency tomorrow and hope to get more details from them later this week in regards to where we are on this list. I'll post when I know more, but tonight we're celebrating this step in the process!