The No News and the Great News

We are so blessed to have so many people excited about our adoption and wondering where we are in the process. The most popular question is obviously, “How much longer until you are able to bring your little boy home.” Unfortunately, this is the “no news” part.

We were scheduled for our third court date on December 15. After pacing around the house for the better half of the day with a phone in each hand, we received a call from our adoption agency letting us know that because the courts were over-booked, they did not even get to our case and we had been rescheduled for the following day, December 16.  Since the other families in our travel group, as well as many families who have traveled after us, have already passed court and are starting to bring their children home, we were feeling quite confident that we would be receiving our happy phone call this week. However, on court date number four, we learned that MOWA (Ministry of Women’s Affairs) still had not submitted their letter of approval, the final piece of paper we have been waiting on since the beginning of November. Why? I have no idea. It’s not that there is a specific problem. It seems they just haven’t gotten around to it.

While this news does not make me want to dance on the kitchen table, I don’t necessarily consider it “bad news”. I believe if you pray about something and trust in God’s timing, then you can’t really sit around the house pouting when things don’t happen exactly as you would like. It is especially inappropriate behavior when you received your referral phone call in only 18 days, which was insanely fast, while others wait for months. So, we are looking forward to court date number five on Thursday, December 23, and hope that we have one more thing to celebrate this Christmas.

Here’s the great news part!! For those who haven’t been following along over the past few weeks, Samantha decided that she wanted to do a GIVE-AWAY at her blog, Little Goody 2-Shoes, to help raise the funds to buy new shoes for all 42 new kids at Kind Hearts in Ethiopia. I felt that 42 pairs of shoes was a pretty darn ambitious goal. Then our friend, Karen Wistrom, with Children’s HopeChest informed us that there are also 18 new children at Trees of Glory who would be blessed to receive new shoes. In order to buy 60 pairs of shoes, Samantha would need to raise $1080 or sell 216 necklaces. I thought we might be acting a little nuts, but she wanted to go for it. The response was incredible!! I really want to tell you how it turned out, but you’ll just have to go read about it here.