-We had a court date appointment for June 3, 2011, but a couple of weeks before we were supposed to leave for our first trip to Ethiopia, it was canceled, due to our agency being investigated by the Southern government of ET (the area where our daughters' orphanage was).
-After the bad news of the canceled court date, in July, the investigation charges on our agency were lifted...This was great news because then we would just wait for our turn for our court date.
-Just a couple of days after the good news, we received devastating news: that our daughters' orphanage was shut down (because of fraudulant practices) and our director told us that she was very sorry, but that they did not know where our daughters were or if we will ever find them, let alone adopt them.
So at this point in the adoption process, we had this terrible news, but we still continued "our best" to trust that God would work this out. We hoped and prayed that someone would help us find our daughters, who were already our daughters in our hearts. July 31, 2011...we were on our way to take one of our kids to the doctor, when we got a call from our director. We found out that some of the nannies at our daughters' orphanage, had told someone from our agency that they traveled with the children to their new undisclosed location. So the nannies had told them where all the children were taken. Our director continued to say that another couple with our agency were staying in Ethiopia and their daughter that they were adopting was in the same orphanage as our girls. So they decided to travel down to the Southern government of Ethiopia and beg for their daughter since they had already passed court and in Ethiopia their baby girl was legally theirs. This ended up working for them and the Southern gov't signed the correct documents they needed and they were able to take their daughter out of the orphanage and with them. So this was going to be our game plan...IF we could get a court date...not likely.
So great news...they know where our girls are & we could miraculously get a court date and have to leave in the next day or two. But we didn't know if we had it for sure so we had to wait on pins & needles for 20 hours. In Ethiopia they have what is called a "rainy season." During this two month or so period, the courts are shut down and all adoptions are at a halt because of the conditions of roads etc. in Ethiopia. So we had to get a court date that week or we would have had to wait two months and who knows where Malia and Ruthie would have been by then.
We had just gotten home from a weekend trip to the lake and we had to unpack and pack again, if we were to leave and get to Ethiopia on time. We had to "faithfully pack" not only for ourselves, but for Malia & Ruthie, because they would hopefully be in our care for most of our trip. WE. COULD. NOT. SLEEP. AT. ALL.!!! We were to find out for sure first thing in the morning around 6 am. Mark woke me up with the news... yes, we have a court date, August 4,(my Papaw's birthday). Praise God! It felt like living in a dream.
So now we had to book our flights and get to another part of the world by 8 a.m. August 4th. If we didn't already feel like this adoption was a spiritual battle, we were about to be hit in the face with it.
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