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!