Watching God Move Mountains

Ahhhh. This is a glorious post. After waiting for so long, feeling defeated for so long, I am now watching God move mountains. God has been moving mountains, but until now, it all was behind the scenes so to speak. Just over a month ago, we received an email from our family coordinator stating that the Kilil clearance (5th level of clearance for Ethiopia's southern region) has put into effect a way to process clearances for children from this region. They were unsure how long it would take for us to see them process clearances, but it was up and running. About 2 weeks ago, referrals started to be issued. It has been what seems like eternity since we have seen any referrals other than those from the waiting children's list. The 1st 3 referrals were for baby girls. These families have been waiting the longest and was such a blessing for them. Although our list didn't budge, it was so reassuring to see movement. On Tuesday we received 2 emails from our family coordinator. The 1st email stated that they were increasing the wait time for males to 14-18months from DTE. At 1st I was miffed that I was being reminded of how slow things are moving, but then I was overcome with peace. This might have been partly due to me opening up God's word and not just hiding behind the Bible Studies I was working on. Anyways, the increase in wait time really meant nothing and this was the 1st time it was increased, but we stayed within the range. Every other time the wait time increased, we were pushed further from the range or removed from the range. Not this time. Although we are at the start of the range, we are still in the range (14.5 months). For this, I am rejoicing. The second email stated that our home study has expired and that our I-171H is about to expire. My 1st thoughts were those of inconvenience, but quickly began to seem like no big deal. We needed to update these anyways to allow us to adopt an infant. Because our original request was for a 1-3 year old, we are not approved to bring a boy under 1 into the US. I don't anticipate these updates to be a big deal and contacting our social worker is on my to do list today. We have decided to ask our social worker to approve us for as many kids of both gender and of as big of an age range as she will allow. This is something we wish we had done from the start. It will be interesting to see what she sees fit for us. Once the home study is updated, we will send it to USCIS and they will issue us a new I-171H with our new request on it. This does not change our request with the agency. I believe we will leave that at one boy 0-12 months; however, if we should change our minds again, the approval will already be there. Yesterday, there was all sorts of good news.
#1, a fellow adoptive family asked there family coordinator about the kilil clearances. This was the response they received:
"America World has received a clearance for a child from the southern region and
are aware of others that have been issued. We anticipate receiving more
clearances in the near future and therefore hope to see more referrals issued
over the next couple of weeks. For confidentiality reasons, we will not note if
children are referred from the Southern region but we can share with families
the rate at which we see clearances being issued. We hope to have more
information to share by the time we have our February conference call."

Sounds good to me :)

#2 On the yahoo group, an encouraging note. It is so easy to get wrapped up in the DTE list seeing our number stay the same or worse yet, get bigger. Many of us waiting don't view the needs at a glance list, which stated families court dates, embassy dates, etc. This parent pointed out that on the NAG list, families of 24 or more children have been submitted to embassy and will soon be taking their children home. This frees up space in the transition home for 24 more children who need to be referred. WooHoo!

Finally, #3 A families referral for a 4 month old baby BOY! This puts us at number 10! We are finally in the top 10!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My heart is rejoicing. I am so hopeful (which I really needed) that things are going to move really fast now. This is the flood so many of us were waiting for. I know this is dumb, but I just can't help myself. My new guess is that we will have our referral in 2 months. We shall see.

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