Cleared for travel!

We got the call today that we have been waiting for! Our social worker called this morning to tell us that the US Embassy in Ethiopia has cleared us to travel. Our agency is asking the Embassy for a Feb 8th appointment date, but we won't know for sure if we will get that date until Monday morning. We were told that if we get the date we will need to be in Ethiopia on Feb 3rd. This means that we will find out if we get the embassy appointment on Monday and then have to leave on Tuesday! Wow - nothing like short notice. If we don't get the Feb 8th date, then we are optimistic it will be very soon thereafter.

It has been obvious to us over the past couple weeks how truly perfect His timing has been throughout this journey, and we know that today was an answer to prayer. Thank you God!

Waiting for a Visa

We learned today that all of the necessary documents have been submitted to the US Embassy in Ethiopia and we are finally just waiting our turn to be called to travel. As I mentioned earlier there is a backlog at the Embassy so we are not sure when we will get that call. Presently, the US Embassy in Ethiopia only issues 10 visas every 2 weeks to our adoption agency, and our agency has at least 30 children waiting for visas. The upcoming Embassy dates are Feb 1st, Feb 15th, March 1st, and March 15th. We are praying that we will get called for one of these dates. Some of the families have had as little as 24-48 hours notice to travel. Yikes! I'm going to get packed up this weekend so when we get the call we are ready to go!

Thank you all for your prayers - they continue to be answered. We're praying now that all goes smoothly with the Embassy and that our forever family is reunited again soon.

Answered prayers

Today we received our monthly update on Joseph. We were happy to hear that he has remained healthy throughout the month and has gained almost a pound putting him just over 20 pounds. Praise God for these answered prayers! This was something we had been specifically praying for over the last month - ALL glory to God! We were also excited that one of the pictures that was sent was of him holding the photo book that we had made for him. It has pictures of us, our family, and his room in it. The social worker said that he smiled when he saw the picture of himself on the front page. As for other development he seems to be doing well - his gross and fine motor skills are certainly on track. His language development seems to be a bit behind, but we are not really concerned right now about that because Amharic is actually his second language. The language that was spoken with his birth parents was a different language. This means that English will be his third language in 2 years - so we know it will take time.

We also received news this week that his birth certificate and Ethiopian passport have been secured. Now we are just waiting for our agency to submit our information to the US Embassy so they can assign us a date to pick up our visa to bring him home. For multiple complicated reasons there is a SEVERE backlog at the embassy right now and it looks like it may be several more months before we travel to pick him up. We are completely heartbroken right now about this. We know that God does answer prayers so we ask for your prayers for our situation in the weeks to come.

1 John 5:14-15
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.