How To Encourage People Who Are Adopting

My America World Adoption Association yahoo group has been discussing both positive and negative comments that we have received concerning our adoptions. A fellow adoption mom complied all our experiences and posted it on her blog. PLEASE, PLEASE go check it out! International adoption is so difficult and it helps to know how to encourage the people you know.

Thank you to all the AWAA moms to be for their honest words.

We have had our fair share on hurtful comments, unintentional snubs, and careless words. I think it is always good to try to understand how other people are feeling. It is so easy accidently hurt someone's feelings. This blog entry gives you a good idea of what to say and not to say. Anyway, check it out. I think it will be helpful!

http://ourethiopiandaughter.weebly.com/

Love, Laura

We are officially DTE!!!!!

Hello friends and family! As of today, we have completed our paperwork (called our Dossier) for adoption #2!!! ...and it only took 10 months. (whew!) Yesterday we received our last piece of paperwork in the mail. Today I went down to Kinkos to make 4 copies of all of it.

So, before everyone gets too excited, let me explain what comes next in the process:

It should arrive in Virginia at the main AWAA office on Monday. If everything looks good then it will be sent to the Ethiopian Embassy in DC to be Authenticated and then it's off to Ethiopia. When that happens we receive our DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) number. This number tells you where you are at in line to get a referral. With our last adoption we were family #21 which meant that we could track approx. when our referral would come by knowing who had already received their referral. When we got up to #19, we knew we were close. The Ethiopia program has grown substantially so it will be interesting to see what number we are at after 3 years.

Our agency cannot give us an exact time frame since there are tons of variables in the process. Anyone who has been to a foreign country can understand how easily things change. They have given us a estimated time for referral from DTE to be 4-8 months for a healthy child ages 0-12 months. We are requesting a child 0-12 months, either gender, and we are open to special needs. This may or may not speed up the process for us.

So in a nutshell, we are moving forward, but we still have a while to wait. It is good to be over the hurdle of completing the dossier, though. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we prepare to wait. This is by far the hardest part of the process and prayers for patience would be appreciated!

We have a court date!

Hello everyone! We officially have a court date:

Tuesday July 15th

Please be praying that are daughter Zamara gets through court successfully on this day. If she doesn't, than we have only 3 weeks until the court closures to get through court. We are trusting in God that all will go well. Please also be praying for the Cox family and the Moles family who also have the same court date.

Sorry it has taken so long to post. Last week I was gone at our annual Christ In Youth Summer Conference with our high school students. It was an amazing week! God really worked in a lot of students lives.

This Sunday June 29th is our baby shower. It is not a typical baby shower--guys and girls are invited. It is more of an open house for all our friends and family. We hope that all of you who are in Flagstaff will join us. It is at our house from 2-5pm. Let me know if you want to attend and I can get you directions to our house.

Lastly, I am picking up my older sister Bekkah from the Phoenix Airport tomorrow (sans children!). She is flying in for the shower. She has never had a chance to visit us in Flagstaff before. We plan on taking a trip to Grand Canyon, Sedona, and Jerome to show her Arizona. I am so excited to get to spend time with her this weekend. I don't think either of us will get any sleep--we will just be talking the whole time. Poor Craig! He will have to put up with us all weekend!

Thank you all for your prayers as we have waited for our court date. I eagerly anticipate posting good news about a successful court date here soon...

blessings,
Laura (and Craig)