What's Next???

In 6 days, Matthew's birthfather will travel from his village all the way to the capital city of Addis Ababa. He will appear before the US Embassy, and confirm that Matthew's paperwork is correct. Our hope is that the Ethiopian courts will hold his court date during the same visit, so he only has to make the journey one time.

Then we will wait for the Embassy to issue our PAIR letter and for the Ethiopian courts to schedule our court date. The last person we watched go through this process took 35 days from birthparent interview to adoptive parent interview. 35 days for our case would put us in Ethiopia around January 20th. It is looking like we will still need to make two trips. Our first trip will be to pass court. Then we will come home and wait for our interview with the US Embassy. This will be about 4-6 weeks after our court date. Then we will go back to Ethiopia and bring Matthew home FOREVER! It is looking like he will be home by March. All of this could change, and it could be shorter or longer. If we've learned anything along the way, it's that adoption is unpredictable.

Yesterday morning I was feeling really sad. I was watching adoptive family videos and torturing myself. I was crying over Cruz, and crying over missing Matthew, and just wanting all of this to be over. I thought, well, I can sit here all day and be sad, or we can do something proactive. Mondays Kenny is off of work, so we went to my parents' house and picked up the crib. We moved the furniture in our room around, and set up his crib.

It's making it all so real. We had the mattress on the lowest setting, and then we realized, OH MY GOODNESS, he is a baby and can't even sit up yet. So, Kenny lifted it to the middle setting. So crazy. My friend Hilary is still in Ethiopia and she sent me a quick note yesterday about Matthew, "He's simply precious and full of smiles always! I've yet to hear him actually cry...such a sweet boy!!!" So encouraging to have her there loving on our son. 

This week I received this necklace in the mail from my friend Robin Krill. She recently moved to Portland. She is a friend that just gets me on a deep level. We talk about real things, or I should say, we text about real things ;) Thank you Robie! Love you. 

Prayer requests:

Please pray that Matthew's birthfather will only have to come to Addis once. 

Pray that we will receive our PAIR letter quickly and get our court date.

Pray for a new one-trip policy. 

Pray that Matthew is home in early February. 

Never hurts to pray big! 

We want to wish you all a Merry Christmas! We won't be sending out a card this year, as we are so close to having Matthew home, we want to wait for him to be in it! 

"'Til He appeared and the soul felt it's worth"