Cinco dias!!!

Yes that's onlydays!!!

Six days...

Getting a little closer...

Seven days!!!

                         Seven days... for our court day! Lord Jesus, if it's your will... let it happen!

It looked so far, nevertheless, we are only 7 days away!  That girl that God chose for us will officially be our daughter. Please... keep us on your prayers!

Court date!!!

I wanted to say this in a poem or some other unique way; But I couldn't do it and I can't hold it any longer:
We have a court date!!!  May 11
I hope that becomes the best mother's day present for my wife a "passed court" (spelled right?)
If you don't know what "court date" means:
This is the date when our adoption case will be heard by a judge in the Ethiopian Court and once we pass... Aisha will be declared legally our daughter!!

Please help us pray for that day...   Thank you!!!

(Almost) Wordless Saturday

Love you my son...

Longing for you...

Waiting for that day in which we can say it out laud: “This is our daughter, forever”

Random update

While waiting for news on our court date we had a chance to see the African Children Choir. It was a very nice show and our son had a chance to wear our experimental T-shirt painting prototype, not too bad for a first try.

No photography was allowed in the theater so I don't know how this happened!!  wink!

On preparing for our daugther we had also been "nesting" which included painting most of the house; with some help as you can see!!!

Still the wait is stressing, but our little guy is finding another way to cope with it...

Hopefully we have an announcement for next week... waiting on God!!!

Waiting for court date!!!

Thank you Lord for them:

Our son Adiel, who thanks God has always been relatively healthy, wasn’t feeling too good today. After church, we had to stop at work to pick up some medicine for him and while I was doing a quick organizing there, the following conversation happened:

Him: Daddy…?

Me: Yes son?

Him: Can you give me a hug? Because I’m still sick.

Well, it didn’t take me a second to drop what I was doing and to have him on my lap giving him a strong and long hug.

I should mention, he shows his love to us every day, nevertheless, he is not the cuddly type, so as much as I dislike seeing him sick, I enjoy those moments when he requires from us something like “just a hug”.

(We still got to take a couple of pictures by the river)

Now, back to Ethiopia… well, we still are waiting for the court date. We should know about it this week, praying for it!

Hopefully we’ll have more news soon, have a blessed week!!!

Adoption update

Time for a little update. Actually more like a little explanation for those outside the adoption world. Some friend or family members have asked me, when is she coming? Do you know her? How old is she? And many other similar questions. Sometimes my answers might have sound kind of evasive but, the truth is that for a long time nobody knew the answer, including me, and even now I don’t have some of those answers… so I’ll try to explain:


Most international adoption take from 9 months to 4 years, yes, a few take less time and some have taken more than that. The factors that create that range include:

• Country where the adoption is coming from.

• Gender and age of the child.

• New laws and regulations for international adoption.

• Time needed to obtain, notarize and certify all paperwork.

• Agency being used.

• And many others, but these mentioned give a good idea.

Our Story in a few words,

My wonderful wife and I made the decision to adopt a little girl from Ethiopia by the end of 2008 (in some countries you can’t choose the gender), in early December we sent the first application to our agency “Children’s Hope International”

After four long months (actually it was quick, is common to take longer than that) of collecting all our paperwork, the big pile of documents, called “dossier”, is sent to our agency and we are placed in a waiting list on April 13, 2009. During this time, all we know about our child is that is a girl, no name, no age, no DOB, not even aware is she has been born.

From there the main thing left, besides keeping up with immigration paperwork, is WAIT and WAIT and WAIT. The wait in our case was supposed to be between 6 and 13 months. We waited 9 months!! No complains. During all this time no new information is produced, nothing happens except getting closer; and the long answer to the “do you know anything new?” question is: “no”

And then… the most expected phone call for the last many months happens! And we are told that we have a referral, which means God finally tells the agency who is going to be our daughter and all the basic information is revealed; now, besides gender we know age, DOB, place of birth and we can see her face in a picture. Se bring them on, we can answer some questions now, not all though! [We are here at this time]

Still doesn’t mean we can hop on a plane and go to get our girl. Our girl has been chosen but the court system in Ethiopia has to make it legal. That means another wait of six to ten weeks. Once we pass court, the adoption is legal and she is officially our daughter.

Here we can plan our trip to leave in 3 or 4 weeks, stay a week or so in Ethiopia and return home with our daughter and start a new phase in our lives. Our son (from The Philippines) will likely come with us on this trip.

I hope this explain to a point the adoption process, not as simple as you can see!!!

Blessings for everyone!!!