Happy Birthday Hope

We taught Hope the sign for "I love you" when we visited her in 2014. She would sign it to us and tell us each night as we tucked her in that she loved us. 

We took this picture and sent it to her for her Birthday this month...dreaming of the day we can tuck her into this bed and tell her we love her each night again.

October has been a BIG month for us! Not only was it our sweet “Hopes” 10th Birthday this month, but today marks ONE YEAR since we received a “YES” that we were told would be impossible to get. It was the “YES” from the Ethiopian government office known as MOWA that we had prayed about getting for 2 years and finally..it happened and we knew…this IS possible.

And today, one year later, we know it still is possible, God is STILL moving mountains on our behalf..and we are closer than EVER to bringing our daughter home.

We wanted to give you a quick update on where we are in the PAIR process as many of you have been asking and praying for us. When we last posted about our adoption, we shared that we had received an intent to deny (click here to read more about that). We gathered as much documentation as possible and submitted it, but we still weren’t sure if they would approve us. On September 28^th we got the verbal news that we had been approved by the USCIS and they had forwarded our case on to the US Embassy in Ethiopia for their investigation and final decision on whether or not they would allow Hope to immigrate (official email came October 1^st). We were told this portion of the process could take 6-8 weeks and that most of the time the Embassy interviews people involved in the case to clarify questions and make their final determination. On October 26^th, the Embassy officially scheduled the interview with the guardian for November 3^rd, at 8:00 am their time (12:00 am our time). We were told we may get an email that day with the decision OR a request for more documentation. We are asking that you please say a prayer before you go to bed on November 2^nd (or you can wake up with us at 12:00 am) for the interview to go well and for her case to have the final PAIR approval from the U.S. Embassy that day!!

Once this approval is finalized, we can submit our case to the Ethiopian court and we will wait for an Ethiopian court date for the guardian, then we have to get MOWA (Ethiopian government office that gave us the YES one year ago) to RE-approve the case, and THEN we finally get our court date to go get custody. This whole court process has been taking 3 or so months lately..so our dreams of having her home for Christmas are seeming unrealistic. But..you never know!!