Amerigandaopia

  Once we decided to adopt, we originally decided on Liberia.  After months and months of no news, we checked in with the agency to find out what was going on.  The agency is never one to just “offer” information, so after a ton of waiting and being #2 on the waiting list they let us know that the Liberia program was having problems.  The country was requiring DNA testing, etc.  So, we asked if changing countries would make it happen any earlier – they said yes.  Needless to say, we changed countries to Ethiopia. 

We happened to call the agency to check in – hoping to God that we would get some kind of news since we hadn’t heard anything in a long time.  It was our “lucky day” and they were doing referrals.  We were lucky, because they had forgotten that we had changed countries and still had us down for Liberia.  Had we not called that day, we would have missed out on a referral at that time.  They sent us one picture of Yohannes and we fell in love immediately! All we knew was his name, that he was 8, both his parents had died and he had come to the foster home after living in an orphanage. I will never forget the looks on Jacob and Caleb’s faces when they saw this picture for the first time.  It was one of the most precious moments of my life.

It was like getting that first ultra-sound of Jacob and Caleb.  We knew that this was real.  We had not only a name but a face - and a beautiful face at that!

We had waited for eight months for this referral.  Now, the wait began until the day that we brought Yohannes home! 

We thought that the court date would come rather quickly - I am not sure why we thought that!  First, came Ethiopian holidays and the courts shut down, then we were told that the staffing in the agency within Ethiopia that does the adoptions was short staffed.  We actually thought we might end up getting Karim from Uganda before we ever heard a word about Yohannes!  Finally, in March, we heard that we would have a court date on March 26th!

The origingal court date got moved to April 11th. We passed and left to pick him up on June 14th.