Foster Journey

Hello,
Just thought I would fill you in on our Foster Parent journey.  Things are moving pretty fast.  The agency is a little taken aback by my drive to get through the paperwork and training.  They have no idea what a year of waiting can do to somebody.  We are done with our paperwork and have CPR and 6 classes to go.  Hopefully will have the classes done by July 8th.  Although this path looks a lot different than the one to Ethiopia we are embracing it and finding out the things that scared us the most about it, aren't so bad after all.  The great thing that we are learning is that there is tons of support for the foster families.  There is a social worker on call 24/7 to help with anything that comes up.  That is huge!  Although we hope to adopt a child that we foster we are preparing ourselves for the possibility of a short term(1 year) stay in our home.  We have just come to realize that any time in a loving home will be the gift that we can offer.  Please keep us in your prayers as we navigate this bumpy road.

Love,
DMM

It's been a while!

I was surprised to look at the date of my last post 4/23.  We have had a lot of contemplating going on since then.  The April referrals never came and haven't yet in May either.  Things have slowed down so much that we needed concrete answers from our agency and then time to step back and figure out what to do.  After speaking with our agency they said that we could easily continue to wait another 12 to 24 months.  The realization hit us pretty hard but we finally felt like we knew the truth.  I definitely had been in denial.  I kept hoping somehow all of the changes in the Ethiopia Adoption program wouldn't apply to us.   As you may know from reading past posts we have felt some urgency with our wait time due to the fact that our twins are going to be Juniors in high school next year and because we aren't spring chickens anymore.  We weighed that concern in our decision about how to proceed.  We looked at all of our options: changing agencies, changing countries, or domestic foster/adoption.  Our final decision is to remain on the waiting list for a child from Ethiopia while we proceed to take training to become foster parents.  We are not closing any doors just opening a new one.  So we will see where this journey takes us.  I can't begin to explain how relieved and relaxed we feel about this decision.  It has definitely taken some pressure off and I am not sure why.   I think for the first time I truly feel I am letting our future child be in God's hands.  My obsession with checking in with emails and facebook is completely gone.  What a relief!  We begin our Foster Care training on June 9th and have already begun paperwork etc.

We will keep you posted!
Love,
DMM

Referrals-come out wherever you are!

Come out come out wherever you are!  The referrals are definitely in hiding.  Our agency had 0 in March and only 2 so far this year.  April has got to be the month!  Last year it was one of the biggest referral months of the year.  Does that mean anything?   I have no idea, but it sounds good.  We have been told that there are children of all ages waiting for paperwork to be collected for referral.

Patience!  Prayers!  Perseverance!
Love,
Deena

She is my Ordinary Hero!

I feel so blessed to be able to tell this story of how the wonderful founder of Ordinary Hero absolutely walks the walk of her company every day....
 The families that are also using our agency communicate with one another on a daily basis about all things related to adoption from the time you begin the process to the time you bring your child home.  There was a family that was having an extremely difficult time with the adjustment of bringing their child home.  I won't go into detail to protect the family and child.  I was devastated with them through their struggles, but felt helpless being so far away from them.  When I learned that they lived in the neighborhood of Ordinary Hero's headquarters I thought I might give them a call and see if any of their Ethiopian travels, outreach, and advocacy could be of help to this family.  I sent an email to the founder of Ordinary Hero- Kelly Putty asking her for urgent help for this family.  She responded right away and said that she had an idea.  She contacted an Ethiopian family that was willing to travel to them to help them out.  The connection made was of great service to the family.

When I thought about what I was asking Kelly to do I thought it would be easy for her to find an excuse to walk away from the problem.  Instead she and the wonderful Ethiopian family decided to help out total strangers in their time of great need.  I am honored to get to be an affiliate of this company through our Ethiopian Adoption.  The company sells items to serve the Ethiopian community and at the same time helps adopting families raise the funds for their adoption expenses.  There are few people you meet in this world who actually live by their principles every moment of their lives but she certainly seems to be one of them.

Thank you Kelly for all you do!  You inspire me!
Peace!
DMM

9 Months waiting!

It is funny to think about how it also took this amount of time for us to have the twins.  It took a year to get pregnant (1 year of paperwork and decision making) then 9 months of pregnancy (nine months on the waiting list).  I only wish we had reached the end of this road but no end in sight!
I remember dreaming about the twins all of the time and feeling like the time was going so slowly.  This time I pray all of the time and daydream about her but feel like time is going so fast.  I want so badly to stop the clock so that my children aren't any older when she comes.  I don't know why this is so important to me but it is.  We are feeling stronger about the wait knowing that only good has come from the time we have had so far.  We are bound and determined to see it through to bringing our daughter home!

Have a great Day!
DMM 

Throwing away the doubts!

I realize now that I have been lost in doubt.  I let the road blocks and obstacles on this journey cloud what I know to be true in my heart.  There are so many challenges to international adoption that you begin to think, "How will this ever happen?"  The doubts started to take over my thoughts and make me fear the worst (never bringing our daughter home).  I started looking for alternative paths, but none of them felt right.  I looked into fostering/adoption in the U.S., other international adoption programs, and other international adoption agencies.  I assumed that there is a problem with our agency or the Ethiopia Adoption program that was causing the road blocks.  What I realize now is that my doubts are the biggest road block and I need to get my head on straight and trust that what I know in my heart is inevitable!  Since I have come to this realization, my heart is light again and I feel at peace.  For that I am so grateful!

I am happy to be writing some of the great parts of this adoption journey as well as the struggles.  It stretches you in ways that you never imagined.  Thank you for reading and sharing in our journey as well as your continued prayers.  Many of you have told me about your prayers for our family and I can't begin to put in words how much that means to my family and I.

Thank you!
Peace,
DMM

Renew!

Sometimes we just have to have those bad days  so that we can renew ourselves to continue on the journey!Better days ahead!

Timing

I have written before about the difficulty of waiting for God's timing, but today it is hitting me hard.  At the grocery store this morning I see a white woman with two small African American children.  I hope she didn't notice me staring at her because all I could think of is that will be me soon.  Then I got in the car and proceeded to cry because I want to know when soon is.  I headed for home and cried and prayed as I drove  and asked God to please help us get THE phone call today.  And.... just then the phone rang.  No, it was not my adoption agency it was Verizon wireless offering me a new phone.  Isn't that nice!  I wanted to hang up on her but instead I cried my answers to her and she got off the phone quickly.  How is that for timing?

I am so very frustrated today.  I want to reconcile in my mind why it is that there are millions of children needing homes in Ethiopia today and we have a home to give so what's the hold up?  We have prepared in every way we know how and left our hearts open for this child and we want to bring her home.

Please pray that we are united with our daughter soon!
Love,
DMM

P.S.  We are no longer #41 we moved back to #42 and I just haven't been able to change it.  

Kony 2012

Watch this video! 

If you love Ordinary Hero....

Please help us win the contest by purchasing merchandise from their store! If you find something you want to purchase please click on our name in the affiliate drop-down box (Deena Maley) and we will get credit towards our adoption! YEAH!

:)Thanks

Senator Sherrod Brown response!

Dear Mrs. Maley:

Thank you for getting in touch with my office regarding Ethiopian adoptions. I appreciate your bringing this issue to my attention.

I have passed your concerns along to the legislative assistant in my office who handles intercountry adoptions.issues. I will keep your thoughts in mind should this issue come before the Senate.

The intercountry adoption process can often be confusing and frustrating. My office has helped many Ohioans with their intercountry adoptions. If you require assistance, please contact my Cleveland Office at:

1301 East Ninth St., Suite 1710
Cleveland, Ohio 44114
(216) 522-7272

Thank you again for being in touch with me.


Sincerely,

Sherrod Brown
United States Senator

8 months waiting!

Today is our 8 Month Waitaversary. Never thought we would be saying that, but oh how things have changed over that 8 months. This marks the day that we were officially put on the waiting list which doesn't include the time we spent putting together our paperwork, homestudy, etc. Trying to keep perspective and realize that one day this will seem like a flash of time. In the meantime we will keep dreaming about..
how old will she be?
what will she look like?
will she like us?
what will be her favorite thing to do?
will she like having 4 older brothers?
and on and on and on!!!!!!!

A Step Back...

Two steps forward one step back! I just saw an updated list and a family who had previously accepted a child from the "waiting children" list has relinquished their hold on that child and has been put back on the list. UGGHH! I am sure they are devastated that they could not follow through with their adoption of that child. There were many complications due to the child's orphanage closing.
This is the nature of International Adoption. Always changing and never what you expected!
Please pray for our family that we can continue to have patience and peace while we are waiting this painfully long wait to bring our daughter home.

Feelin' Good!

I figured out through piecing together bits of information from other adopting parents from CHI that we may very likely be #1 on the list for a single girl 6 years old. We are on the list for the range 2-6 years old. As the age gets younger we are further down on the list, but as of a few months ago we were the first family on the list asking for a girl 6 years old. WOW! This news definitely brightened our spirits! There has been a lot of harsh news lately (last post). Any encouraging news helps!

We love all of your prayers and support!
-DMM

Please Read these articles!

http://m.christianpost.com/news/intl-adoptions-part-2-adoptive-parents-face-difficulty-with-us-embassy-in-ethiopia-68842
http://m.christianpost.com/news/intl-adoptions-part-1-missionary-waiting-4-years-to-bring-home-adopted-son-68146
http://m.christianpost.com/news/intl-adoptions-part-3-is-the-us-state-dept-opposed-to-inter-country-adoption--69783/

#41

We moved up a spot! A family in our agency that had been waiting 2.5 years received a referral this week for 6.5month old twins. Families waiting for siblings generally wait a long time, which they certainly did. How exciting for them. So we move up 1 spot! Woohoo! We would really love to see those referrals keep coming!

Have a great day!
DMM

Why the Wait????

Sorry for the long lapse in updates! I was waiting to hear from our Ethiopia program director when she returned from her trip. She returned last week and sent out a few updates about how her trip went.
She was surprised to find that the Ethiopian courts as well as some regional MOWCYA(Ministry of Women's, Children's, and Youth Affairs) groups were closed for meetings and training. I am assuming the training has something to do with new processes but there was no specifics about that in her update. They will be closed for 2-2.5 weeks. This does not affect referrals being given out but does affect people further in the process.
We were informed that Children's Hope is making progress in contracting with new orphanages, which was one of my hopes for her trip. CHI lost contracts with several orphanages last year do to orphanage closures. The more connections CHI has with orphanages the more quickly the referrals will come through. When referred children move to the transition home(place where they wait for their families to bring them home) then more orphans can be taken into the orphanages instead of being turned away.

Referrals (In her words)
There are children waiting to be referred in the orphanages that we work in.
For children who are abandoned, they must wait 4 months in order to give a birth
parent an opportunity to reclaim the child, or for a parent who has
relinquished, an opportunity is given as well for the relinquishing parent to
come back and claim their child; - with that being said however, the process for
international adoption can actually start after a 2 month wait if no one has
returned, however, an orphanage director can chose to wait the full 4 months
before processing a child.

Documentation on children being referred for adoption takes a while to obtain.
Some documents come from the officials in the zone where the child is from and
some from the region. Many entities have to sign their names to the necessary
documents. If an office is closed for a particular reason, i.e., meetings,
trainings, seminars, etc., which can be called at any time, some paperwork has
to wait until the individual returns to the office. It could be a couple of
days later, a week or two later or a couple of months later.

As you can see from the above information the adoption process has slowed down in many different areas. We previously thought it was mostly due to the MOWCYA only processing 5 cases per day. In reality, the U.S. Embassy's requests for information about the orphans has caused the most significant delays at this point.

Even with all of the unexpected glitches that have come down our path on our adoption journey, we are still full steam ahead. I admit there were moments of doubt, but we talked it through and know that all we really need is to find patience and trust that it is going to happen exactly when it should!

Thank you for your prayers!
Love,
DMM

No News

Not much to say right now. No referrals. However, we are very hopeful that our agency director's trip to Ethiopia yesterday will bring some news. Preferably good news! She will not return until Febuary 3rd. Hoping for good things in the mean time!

Love,
DMM

Priorities!

We have hit another dry spell for referrals. Last one was December 7th. It really affects the morale of the waiting families when we go for such a long time without hearing anything. In 2010 there were around 7-10 referrals per month. There have only been 8 referrals in the last 6 months. I think about the slower this process gets the more children are left without a place to go. The orphanages can only take so many children at a time. What happens when they are full? Do they have to turn children away? It is hard not to get frustrated when you know that the wait is all so that everyone has their i's dotted and t's crossed. It is important to be sure that the children are truly orphans. It is vital that children have a home, food, shelter, and a loving family. How do we make both things happen without causing the children any further hurt and heartache?

Please pray for everyone involved in this process: The children, adopting parents, agencies, orphanages of Ethiopia, Ethiopian government, U.S. Embassy, so that we may make the orphan children the top priority in this system.

Korah!

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day-Monday

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”--Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

Well said!

A Quote from an essay written by Brian Schoeni who adopted 3 daughters from China-
"It’s about taking something that in some ways is selfish – wanting to be a parent – and transforming it into something that affirms the best in humanity: the ability to love someone unconditionally, simply because I choose to."

Just Breath!

This week I was seeking answers.  I think it is probably because I was tired of telling all of our friends and family over the holidays that, "I don't know why it is taking so long."  I made a 2 phone calls and an email before I got the information that satisfied my brain (at least for the time being).  Often, I have heard myself and from others that they get vague answers to their(adopting families) questions.  It is very frustrating, but I also understand that the agency does not want to give families false hope.  I wasn't settling with vague answers this week.  Enough is enough!  So, I dug until I got some sense of what is going on in our agency, the orphanages they work with, the Ethiopian Court system, and the U.S. Embassy.  I got enough to sustain me for now.

So I will try to explain to the best of my ability.  One issue that families who are adopting older children are dealing with is a change in the culture of the region in which our agency has an orphanage.  They are seeing many families give up infants while keeping a child who is 3 years old to help out.  There has also been a shift in the age ranges that adopting families are requesting.  In the past when a child older than 2 years was referred to our agency they often went on a waiting list.  The orphanages knew this and tried not to refer this age because they didn't want the children to wait.  Now there are more families willing to adopt this age so there aren't waiting children anymore.  As a result our agency has let the orphanage directors know that there are families available for older children now.  Finally, the slow down in the entire process has come from the Ethiopian Courts asking for more documentation than ever, the U.S. Embassy making requests for documentation that the agencies can't anticipate, and the Ethiopian government actually deciding to slow down the process by allowing only so many approvals go out per day.

So with all that, we were told that instead of expecting the wait to be 0-3 months we should expect the wait to be 12 months.  Yikes!  All I have to say is at least we have a general idea and live our lives accordingly.  Thank goodness we have already put in half that time, because tomorrow we are officially 6 months on the waiting list.

That is it in a nutshell!

So, we are looking towards the summer for some action!  We appreciate everyone's concern and prayers.  Please keep them coming!

Love,

DMM & MTM