William & Charis

We didn’t have to wait long!  Charis got a phone call Friday afternoon that we have received a referral!  This means, we now have a name and a face for the baby we are working to adopt!

Here’s how it went down . . .  Two weeks ago we turned in out dossier.  We knew it could happen fast, but we have been preparing ourselves for a long wait.  The dossier has since traveled to Washington DC, where it received another round of stamps and approvals.  Then it was couriered from DC to Germany to Addis Ababa (the capital of Ethiopia).  Within days of its arrival there, we received our phone call.

Or little girl is gorgeous, but we can’t post a picture here.  Sorry.  She is technically not ours yet, so we must respect privacy issues.  But we can tell you…

She was dropped off at an orphanage in early June of this year.  That date is assumed to be her birth date, though no one really knows. Her mother was a teenage prostitute and too poor to care for her.  Her father is totally unknown.  Tragically, this is an all too common story in Ethiopia.

We have a long way to go still.  We will wait now until our paperwork meets up with hers in the Ethiopian court system.  Then we will wait for a court date to be set when a judge will make the final decision and declare her our child.  After the court date, we will wait 6-8 weeks to travel and pick up our baby girl.

Please pray specifically that all the paperwork will move quickly and smoothly through this cumbersome system.  Pray that the court date will be set soon, and that the judge will grant us the joy of being her parents.

And, pray that God will protect and provide for our little girl.  Pray that she will be loved and cared for, protected and warm.  Pray that her health will improve and that her belly stays full.