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