Mekedes Turns 10 Today; May 8th

Ergech with her Care Package

We Passed court for Mekedes and Ergech!

Jeff and I spent 10 days in Ethiopia with our girls.  It was an amazing time of getting to know them and working through the language barrier. We drove almost two hours to meet the girls younger sister  S*****.  We can't post her name or picture until we pass court for her.  She is 6 yrs old and had a missing top front tooth!  She was very sweet and very shy.  We learned that Mekedes likes to ride bikes, jump rope, draw, her favorite color is blue, and wants to be a doctor. She likes to wear dresses and the only thing she asked for when she came home.... was socks!!  Ergech also loves to jump rope, read books, play with dolls, her favorite color is red, and she wants to be a nurse. The both love technology; cameras, ipods, and Angry Birds! Anytime we gave the girls a treat, they would break it up into pieces and share with us and their friends. The girls are very kind and very organized!  They like to clean up any mess they make....  I assume this might change over time (but I hope not).  I can see that we will need to spend a lot of time teaching the girls to be children. They have had a lot of responsibility in their short lives and have been witness to things most adults have not had to deal with. They are very resilient!  The girls were SO happy when they learned that we would be adopting their baby sister too!  It will take some time for her paperwork to be complete and then she will get to come home (hopefully by the end of summer). We got an email today stating that the girl's paperwork will be ready to submit to embassy on Wed, May 16.  We could be cleared to travel to pick them up anytime after the 16th.  We anticipate that the US Embassy will ask for another interview with the girl's biological father prior to clearance.  We are getting close!!

We have a Court Date!!

April 5th is our court date for the oldest two sisters!  We leave on March 27th to meet our girls.  In less than two weeks, we will be in Ethiopia with them!!!   We received an email this morning letting us know that the Women's and Children's ministry has already written us a positive letter in favor of us adopting the girls.  This is a huge step towards passing court on April 5th!!  This letter has the potential to hold up the adoption process for weeks and even months!  Our family is BLESSED!!!  We are taking Kaylee Grace with us to meet her new sisters. We thought she would be a great "ice breaker"!  The girls have started to learn English, but have a very limited vocabulary.  We are very excited about this next phase of our journey!

A beautiful surprise in our Adoption Plans!

We found out in early January that the two sisters that we had accepted the referral for (ages 7 & 15) would not be available for adoption.  They had an older sister (age 19) and the girl's aunt did not want to separate the girls. She decided to bring all three girls to live with her.  We were very heart broken about losing the referral for these sisters. We had never thought about adopting older children until we saw the first set of sisters on the WCL. Those two girls, who we never even met, opened our hearts to looking at adopting older children.
On January 22, God had a very different plan for our family. There were two more beautiful sisters on the Waiting Children’s List (WCL) and we again asked to review the file. It didn’t take us long to know that we wanted to be these girls’ parents! We officially accepted the referral for these two girls on January 31, 2012.  Well…. These two girls have another sister as well, only she is younger. We had been told about her, but was also told that the relatives who took her after the girls’ mother passed away, wanted to keep her. On February 1, we got a phone call from America World letting us know that the father wanted all three girls to be adopted together, and would we take her! We said, Yes! This means more paperwork and more fees.  Originally, we had approval for one healthy infant girl through immigration. Now we had to get an updated home study addendum stating we could be approved to adopt three older children with minor medical needs. This approval came for Homeland Security on February 17^th.   We still have not seen a picture of the youngest sister and hope that she will be brought into the Transition Home in the next couple of weeks. We are also waiting to get assigned a court date; should be late March or early April. Then we will meet our girls!

We accepted the referral for two sisters!

We officially accepted the referral for two sisters off the waiting child list on December 21st. They are currently in Ethiopia living in an orphanage. We should be meeting them within the next 12 weeks!  The girls are about 15 and 7. The people in Ethiopia do not celebrate birthdays like we do in the US so the ages are estimates based on x-rays of the girl's wrists. 

We sent out information to friends and family on how to help us financially with the adoption costs if anyone is willing and able. The Eternal Family Program allows people to donate to our adoption and then claim the donation on taxes as a charity. A significant portion of the fees that we have to pay go directly to the orphanage for caring for the girls for the past two years.  We hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Huge change in our Adoption Plans!

We had originally set out to adopt another baby girl from Ethiopia. We would have been six months DTE on December 24th....  Then we saw the picture of our girls on the waiting children's list! They are two sisters ages 7 and 15!  They are beautiful girls and we can't wait to meet them.  I am working on putting together a Christmas care package for the girls. The Ethiopian Christmas is on January 7th and I found a traveling family who will take it to them and get pictures for us!  Sorry, we can't post pictures until we pass court and they are "officially" ours.  Please pray for these girls as their lives are about to change from all that they know.

The Fund Raising Continues....

     I have been making Africa t-shirts all day as a fundraiser to help with our travel expenses to Ethiopia. My daughter’s volleyball coach owns a children’s resale store here in Klamath Falls, and she is going to allow me to sell my shirts at her shop. The Blue Dot Kids Store is located at 125 South 9^th Street in downtown. I also have some t-shirts for sale at the Leap of Taste Coffee Shop in the medical/dental building. I am selling the shirts for $20.00 each and all the proceeds will go towards our airfare. Please email me if you would like a t-shirt and can't make it to the store. I will be happy to make one and get it shipped to you.          kskidgel@yahoo.com        

     It is my goal to be able to stay in Ethiopia with our daughter between our court date and the embassy appointment. This could last anywhere between 4 and 8 weeks, depending on how fast the courts are operating.  


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