February Referral Updates

Our agency sends out monthly updates for all families that have referrals. We received these pictures early this month of Lilia. They were taken at the end of February. Doesn't she look great!? She is up to 9.5 lbs (up from 6.5 at 2 months old) and is trying to roll over. She's also pulling up her head to a 45 degree angle which is great to hear developmentally.

I'd like to say these pictures brought nothing but pure joy, but it's not true. Mixed in with joy in seeing my daughter's face, I felt a deep sadness. A sadness that she is growing and changing and we're missing it. A sadness that she doesn't have her mama and daddy and big sister cheering over every little milestone, giving her millions of hugs and kisses a day. A sadness that she is halfway across the world and frankly, it is going to be awhile until we can bring her home.

Our agency is giving us the ballpark figure of traveling mid May. Why? Because recently all the requirements for issuing visas for children adopted from Ethiopia changed. We are currently waiting for our post placement paperwork to be submitted (it has been almost a month since we passed court) and it is taking forever. It has been so painful to wait any news and to hear nothing. If you think of us, please pray for Lilia and for us. Pray for God to stretch out his hand and bring her home faster than we have been told. Pray that whatever obstacle there is in getting this paperwork submitted would be taken out of the way. We need to get our baby girl home. This family is not going to feel complete until she is in our arms. Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement, honestly, we've need them.

Delays

I overheard Brendan and Emma talking yesterday morning. It went something like this:

Emma: Daddy, I’m sad

B: Why are you sad sweetheart?

Emma: I am ready to go to Africa

B: You are?

Emma: I’m ready to go to Africa right now.



Us too, Emma Bean, us too. We had been overjoyed to pass court two weeks ago and then find out we had tentative travel dates of March 13-19. We knew because of our homestudy update in progress (due to our move) that we most likely would be able to travel that soon, but set our sights on the last week of March. Two days later we received an email from our agency letting us know there were some changes in the works with the way visas were going to be processed and there would most likely be several weeks delay. We received another email the following week telling us the new regulations were that it would take 8 weeks after processing our post-placement paperwork for the Embassy to issue visas for adopted children from Ethiopia. Needless to say, we have been pretty much heartbroken. To think we are going to hold and bring home our baby girl within weeks, only to find it is months, is devastating. Our post-placement paperwork is being finished in Ethiopia and should be submitted by the end of the week. That puts us as traveling the last days in April or early days in May. Please pray for us as we are asking God to work something quickly. While we are not sharing openly Lilia’s story of becoming an orphan, her case is pretty straightforward. We are praying somehow that the visa processing time takes less.

All that said, we are so thankful that Lilia is ours and she will come home! We received some pictures from our YG friends, Amy and Mike, who took a care package over to Lilia when they picked up their two beautiful boys. We are thrilled to have more pictures and see how great Lilia looks. They said “Your baby girl is a little precious peanut! We prayed over her and her eyes were moving around the whole time looking at things outside. I CANNOT wait for you to have the experience of going to Ethiopia to get her!!” Us too! So we’ll share a few of those pics here in the next post. Enjoy!

Pictures