Trusting in His Sovereignty

"All this also comes from the Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom."

Isaiah 28:29

A lot of things are happening in Ethiopia right now. Many families who already have their paperwork there and are waiting to be matched, or even who have met their children and are waiting for a date for their pick-up trip are being forced to redo some of their paperwork, leaving them wondering when they will be able to get their children home.Some families I know about should have already been on their second trip, but they are forced to wait on bureaucracies and red tape instead.

Here is part of an article that explains more, in better ways than I can.

Please pray for everything to clear up, not just so we can get through when it is time to send in our Dossier, but for those children who are waiting to come home, and those whose eligibility for adoption is in question.

I wonder now if the months it has taken to get things in order -the procrastinating, the waiting on people to get their things done for us, the rescheduling of appointments-has been to protect us or Zoey from something. I dont know what things are being requested for resubmission, or if we will need to do that. I don't know if this will effect our waitlist time either. A lot of things seem to be up in the air, and hopefully, since we haven't submitted our paperwork, if anything needs to be redone, we can take care of it beforehand, saving us time and money.

Also, our Family Coordinator- the woman who is organizing our dossier and who is guiding us through all this is leaving our agency. We will be assigned a new Coordinator next week, of course she/he won't just be ours, but a lot of families' also. This may or may not have some effect on the timing of our dossier submission.

voanews.com

Ethiopia’s Ministry of Women’s, Children’s and Youth Affairs has issued a directive saying it will process a maximum of five inter-country adoptions a day, effective March 10. Currently, the ministry is processing up to 50 cases a day, about half of them to the United States.
A copy of the directive provided to VOA says the reduction of up to 90 percent in cases will allow closer scrutiny of documents used to verify a child’s orphan status.
Ministry spokesman Abiy Ephrem says the action was taken in response to indications of widespread fraud in the adoption process.
"What we have seen so far has been some illegal practices. There is an abuse. There are some cases that are illegal. So these directives will pave the way to come up with [safeguards]," said Abiy Ephrem.
Investigations have turned up evidence of unscrupulous operators in some cases tricking Ethiopian parents to give up their children, then falsifying documents in order claim a part of the large fees involved in inter country adoptions.
American couples often pay more than $20,000 to adopt an Ethiopian child. Such amounts are an enormous temptation in a country where the average family earns a few hundred dollars a month.
U.S. State Department statistics show more than 2,500 Ethiopian orphans went to the United States last year. That is more than a ten fold increase over the past few years, making Ethiopia the second most popular destination for Americans seeking to adopt overseas, after China.