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Monday, February 9, 2009

Good News!

We have made some new progress! Last Thursday we sent in our last few pieces of remaining paperwork that was needed to complete the homestudy. Today we received an email from our program assistant telling us that she is processing all of it today. So... what that means is that our homestudy should be sent to CIS very soon. Hopefully this week. The way I understand it, the packet has to be approved by our assistant's manager before it can be sent off to CIS. Then once it is approved at CIS we will get fingerprinted. I am not really sure when we will hear from them next. I think once our packet is sent off we will be able to work with our case worker on completing our dossier.

I will write again when we hear something.

Alex

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

New Wait Times

Hi Everybody,

Gladney has this new thing where we can listen in on a conference call once a month and get an update on current wait times and any new changes to the Ethiopia program. So I thought I would share with you our latest guess as to when our baby girl might be coming home.

As I shared last time, our estimated time of getting on the waitlist has been pushed back quite a bit. Initially we thought we might be placed on the waitlist this week or next and that is definitely not the case. Right now sometime in April is our best guess. We still have to complete a small amount of paperwork, get CIS approval, complete our dossier and then get the dossier authenticated. We will work as fast as we can, but some of this stuff is simply out of our control.

It looks like the average time on the waitlist is 6 1/2 months right now. And I guessing that since we are waiting for a girl it will be at least 7 months - though there are many other factors. So if we get on the waitlist in April that means we might get a referral in November, but probably more like December. Then after that it looks as if it will take 1-3 months to get a court date and the court dates are usually scheduled for 10 weeks out from that point. All that adds up to us possibly not traveling for another 14 to 15 months. Maybe April or May of next year.

Please continue to pray for our developing patience with this process. Everytime we hear that it will be a little longer it is very discouraging. We really wanted to bring her home this year. It just isn't looking like that will happen. I just have to keep reminding myself that we started this journey in September and it is already February. Then I realize how quickly this will all pass by and we will be holding our baby before we know it.

Alex