Referral/Travel Meeting

Well...It finally happened.  We had our referral/travel meeting with Tami of Dove Adoptions today.  She went over the entire packet of information that we received on Friday.  Here are some highlights that I am so excited to share with you.

• We received the official "Referral Acceptance Form".  This is the form we will fill out and next air to our agency once we accept the referral.
• We learned that children in the age range that we have requested are 50% abandoned and 50% relinquished.
• Most children are orphans due to illness such as Malaria, HIV, death of the birth parents and extreme poverty.
• The HIV test is done after the referral is accepted.  We will be informed of the results and can make a change if necessary.
• The average wait time for a referral is still 4-6 months.  We have been waiting 3 months and one week. 
• After we receive a referral....we can expect to wait 4-6 weeks for a court date.  We will be given 4 weeks to prepare for our first trip.
• After we return home...it will be 8-10 weeks before we can return to pick up our little guy.

How the referral works.....this is what we are waiting for!!!!

The orphanage at SOS EE makes the matches of children to families.  Dove receives an email with a bunch of legal  info, medical info and most importantly pictures!  As I mentioned before, we will not be sharing these pics electronically as that could foil our adoption.  Once they have reviewed the info and the referral they will call my cell phone, if no answer, the house phone and finally my work phone.  They will tell us about the little one.  They will share his age with us as well as other details.  We will then log into our wonderful email and look at the referral documents and the picture of the little one.  We have 14 days to review the info and make a decision as to whether we will accept the referral.  We are planning on sending the medical documents to an international adoption clinic for professional review.    Once we accept the referral, Dove will request a court date!  That will be another wait, I imagine.

We also received a great deal of travel information.  The reality of this trip began to set in today.  We are going to partner with a reputable and highly recommended travel agent who has experience in international adoption with Ethiopia specifically.  I am researching where we are going to stay.  The orphanage has a guest house that we can stay in that will provide us with meals and a driver/translator.  I am thinking that is the best route at this point.  I am going to chat with some friends that have been there in the last year to get their opinions.  The one thing I REALLY want to do...is visit the area where the little guy is from.  Ethiopia is a very big country.  I want to have as much information about our little one's birth home as possible. 

We, as you can imagine, are a little overwhelmed.  This is actually going to happen.  Wow!  Well please continue to pray for our little one, his birth family, especially his mom.  I am so thankful to her for what she is going to give us! :')

Attached below is a video of a family that adopted thru the same agency, the same orphanage.  I thought you might enjoy a visual of our family's future.


The Journey to Josanna