Finally, an update!

Okay, I'm sorry for the long lapse since my last post. The paperwork part isn't going as fast as we would like, so sometimes it's discouraging to get on here and announce that we really have no news... We do have some news, though not as good as we would like.

We submitted our immigration paperwork to the USCIS back in November and were pleased to see that it had been processed and waiting for us when we returned from Christmas vacation. The United States Government has now approved us as adoptive parent and (presumably) won't try to take our child from us when we bring her back to the U.S. This is a good thing. Also, we got our marriage certificate and both birth certificates authenticated by their respective Secretaries of State, so that is another thing off the list.

We have a few more things we know we need to do. We are waiting for our case worker to return from vacation (Monday) to tell us if there are anythings we do not know we need to do before we send all our paperwork to Virginia (our adoption agency's headquarters). Once we are able to do that, they send it to Washington, DC, where the US Government looks at it again and then it will be sent on to Ethiopia where it will be translated into Amharic and processed. This process can take anywhere from 7-12 months we are being told.

Please pray that we would complete this paperwork quickly as things do have time limits and will start to expire throughout this year. With all the talk this Christmas, I don't know what our families will do if we do not have a little girl by next December 25. We, too, are very anxious of course as well.

I will try to write soon to post all the great gifts we've been receiving already. We have so much support in this, it's unbelievable. I don't know how else we would be doing all this! Thanks so much for your love and prayers.