Chick-fila, Ferrets, USCIS, and Billy Graham

Hahah, what kind of title is that?! Well, it's a synopsis of my day. I have to share about today before I forget because it's just too funny. Today we had our fingerprint appointment with USCIS in Charlotte. Our appointment was at 8am so we took the day off so that we could leave super early and get through traffic. We thought we were doing so well because we left the house at 5:45am. It usually takes about an hour and a half to get there from our house. We were doing great on time so we decided to stop at Chick-fila for breakfast. Brian and I NEVER get up early enough to go out for breakfast so we decided it would be fun this morning and it was! So we had our quick breakfast and hopped back in the car. It was raining but other than that nothing crazy, even though back home it was apparently snowing! Crazy North Carolina weather! Anyway, we were driving along having fun when all of a sudden the traffic started slowing considerably. We kinda expected some traffic so we weren't too worried until we could see that there was a continuous stream of traffic way up ahead. We were stuck Later we heard on the news that no one could ever explain why the traffic where we were was like that. It was a "mysterious slowdown." There was no wreck or construction.

Thankfully we made it to the office, which oddly enough was located in an old shopping/business center, by 8:04am! We went right in and the lady at the desk was very helpful. She told us what form to fill out, what line to stand in, and then where to sit to wait for our number to be called. So, this USCIS office was really like a sitcom. We totally felt like we were in AP Environmental Science again because Brian would always say something that would make me laugh and then our table would get in trouble. I was afraid we were gonna get in trouble for laughing. Let me explain what was so funny but I'll warn you that it could very well be one of those situations that you had to be there to truly experience the hilarity of it.

So the office had a tv set up in the corner on one of those rolling carts. It was just turned on to some random channel. Well, while we were in line we noticed that they were interviewing people about their pet ferrets. People that have tens of ferrets in cages. People that enter their ferrets in contests and win lots of ribbons. We were snickering at the idea of a ferret show being shown here because it probably was deemed by the govnt as the least offensive thing they could find. I mean who would find ferrets offensive? So we went through the line and then they showed us where to sit and wait for our number. At this point a lady was singing a lullaby to her ferret and holding it like a baby. I'm not lying, a long lullaby. Now other people are starting to notice the oddity of it too because the couple in front of us laughed too. We were doing everything we could to hold it in. Then we see the official receptionist that was close to the door look up to see the lady rocking her baby ferret. She gives the TV one of THE funniest looks I have seen in a long time. You know she is thinking, "What the crap is this?" So, she quietly goes over to a desk and fishes out the remote and changes the channel to the news. Hah, we were all relieved.

After that we noticed that after everyone had their fingerprint scan they were given a little piece of yellow paper. Each person carefully folded the paper and then stuck it in a little box that looks like one of those raffle boxes where you enter to win an ipad or a trip to Jamaica. So I jokingly said, "Maybe we'll win an ipad!" To which Brian retorts, "Listen, I worked for the government, they are not giving away ipads. If that's a raffle, then they are giving away something like The Complete Eddie Money Collection on cassette tape." Hah, so of course, I was holding in more laughter. Then, the receptionist lady went to get two brand new boxes of pencils and commenced to sharpening ALL of them. This probably wouldn't be a problem to the normal person but I share a trailer with 3 other teachers and almost at any time of the day one of them will be sharpening pencils. It's maddening really. Sometimes with the electric sharpener, sometimes with the old manual one. So, Brian thought it was great that this lady was sharpening every last pencil for me to hear on my day away from school. Oh, the other thing that happened was that a teenager came in and proceeded to pull out his cell phone while he was in line. I'm guessing that he missed all of the pictures and signs that say, "NO CELL PHONES." Well, about that time, the receptionist lady looked up from her pencils and saw him out of the corner of her eye. She stood up and in a loud voice said, "Oh we got one on a cell phone." So she she headed over to him and pointed at the sign. He remained on his phone and looked at her confused and said, "What?" She then pointed at his phone and at the sign again. He got it that time and put it up pretty quickly.

All in all a very uneventful time at the Appointment Office. Shortly after that we were called up for our scans and then it was time to go after we entered the raffle....that turned out to be just 3 questions about their customer service.

Since we had the day free and it was still early we decided to by Trader Joe's and then to the Billy Graham Library because it was on the same exit and we had heard that it was definitely worth the trip. We had such a good time there. The property is beautiful and peaceful. The actual museum and library is incredible and it's free. It's definitely about Billy Graham but really it's about the many ways that God used him to share the hope and grace of the Gospel with the world. Everything points to God and gives glory to Him. It was so powerful and encouraging. I highly recommend a visit. At the end, we were greeted by some people that work there. They asked if we enjoyed our visit and what brought us there. We told them how we are adopting and that we were just up the street completing some paperwork. They were so thrilled for us and said, "oh can we just pray for your family and your daughter in Ethiopia?" We said, "of course" and they even have a prayer room there to the side. It was the most sweet and loving prayer for our family and our daughter. They said, "Please bring her back her so we can meet her one day!" We all hugged and were so so blessed by our trip there. After that we looked through the library and then had lunch at "The Dairy Bar." The main building looks like a farm because Billy Graham actually grew up on a dairy farm. After you leave the main building, you can tour his family's original house and then walk through the prayer garden and see where Ruth Bell Graham is laid to rest.

It was such a nice day for us to spend together talking and laughing and thinking about our future.

Our March Number

I forgot to update you all with our official number for the month of March. It's so amazing to me to see that there has continued to be soo much movement and families coming together despite all of the craziness and the unknowns surrounding Ethiopian adoptions this month. No matter the situation, God is always trustworthy.

Great news! And a Glossary of Acronyms :)

I wanted to share this great news with you all today because I know so many of you have been praying and asking for updates about what's going on in Ethiopia. Our agency is so great at communicating with us. Seriously, they are wonderful! Anyway, here is the update we received today! Also before you read it let me give you a little glossary of Adoptionese acronyms. After all, I am an ESL teacher and some people have asked for clarification. :)
AGCI: All God's Children International. This is our adoption agency! :)
ASP: Adoption Service Provider. These would be other licensed adoption agencies.
JCICS: Joint Council on International Children's Services. They are a non-profit that "helps orphaned and vulnerable children live in a permanent and safe family by advocating on their behalf, marshaling the resources they need, educating those who serve them and mobilizing those who care."
MOWA: Ministry of Women's Affairs. They are the primary adoption authority in Ethiopia.
MOWCYA: Ministry of Women's, Children's, and Youth Affairs (The new name for MOWA)
NGO: Non-governmental Organization. The World Bank defines them as "private organizations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development."

Statement from our agency:
At this time, all Foreign Staff on the ground in Ethiopia are reporting that MOWA has completed their staffing changes and are now currently working at full capacity to complete those adoption cases currently re-scheduled or assigned a court appointment through the courts of Addis Ababa. Our staff believe this to be around 800 cases they are working at full force to complete with no restrictions on the number of cases processed each day. This is great news! We are thrilled to hear these drastic changes do not seem to be going into full effect.

We are also pleased to report that for new cases moving forward; it appears the original changes proposed by MOWA will not be implemented to the degree of 5 cases a day. At this time it is unknown whether or not MOWA will issue a formal statement regarding how they will process cases in the future, but from all discussions it will not be a drastic decrease from before. Through the continued work, meetings, and advocacy of many Foreign Staff members in Ethiopia, it appears any future changes within the case processing for MOWA will avoid sweeping and disproportionate alterations to the number of cases processed each day. Rather, the hope is that MOWA, Joint Council, Adoption Service Providers, the US Department of State and other NGO organizations can come together to support the government of Ethiopia in strengthening the process for ethical adoptions to continue while also improving the general social structures to assist with family preservation in Ethiopia. This plan was acknowledged in the recent posting by the US State Department this morning at http://adoption.state.gov/news/ethiopia.html. We understand the US Department of State cannot issue a formal statement without MOWA issuing a retraction. Based on the information we are receiving, MOWA is concentrating on processing the current adoptions and the new staff is not focused on numbers, but doing their jobs.

AGCI and our trusted colleagues look forward to collaborating to ensure adoptions move forward with the highest level of transparency possible. It is our commitment to carefully, ethically, and mindfully complete the adoption process on every level for orphaned children. Our hope is that as we do this in collaboration with other licensed agencies, we can also help to eliminate future concerns by MOWA and continue to build trust between their office and the adoption community at large.

See, I told you it was great news! So, thank you so much for praying and signing the petition. We know that God's heart is for orphans and He loves them and always has the best plans.




Much love,

Updates! Look what came in the mail today!

I feel like I have a lot to post so bear with me! :)

Guess what?! Today we finally received our notice from USCIS about our Biometric Fingerprint appointments! We have 8am appointments on March 28th!! Check out the fancy heading on the letter. Isn't it funny that it looks like money? We are super thankful that we finally received something from them because we had mailed our application in at the beginning of January. I'm still not real sure what was happening with it during that time because on the forms, it says that they received it on February 28th. Weird huh? At any rate, ta dah! Here is mine!


Despite the confusion over what exactly will come to pass with the new changes from MOWA, we have seen many referrals and court dates coming through with our agency! Isn't that incredible? God is still working even when we can't see what is up around the bend. He knows and has everything in His hands. I am SO thankful for that. We have not received our official number for March but I will just share that our "unofficial" number is 56! Isn't that nuts? We've come a long way since we started at 93 back at the end of October!
Some of you have asked what we have heard about Ethiopia lately and we still don't really have anything concrete. Here are the points that our agency informed us of that was discussed during the caucus call with the Department of State on Friday.
■Although this change has been supposedly confirmed to have gone into effect on March 10, 2011, there is no information available on what the process could look like moving forward, what cases it impacts, and if and for how long it will remain in effect.
■It was mentioned that cases already registered with the Ethiopian court could possibly experience up to an estimated 12 month delay. It was made very clear by the US Department of State that this was dependent on a number of factors, all of which are yet to be determined, i.e. how many cases are registered, what cases this change will impact, if this change continues to be in effect, etc.
■There is a vast amount of rumors going around related to this change, and none of them are able to be confirmed at this point.
■The head of MOWA has been terminated, effective next week, for unknown reasons.
■We are hearing that there will be meetings between the US Department of State, US Embassy, MOWA, network of ASP Foreign Service Providers, and Ethiopian government offices during the next week. We believe these meetings will begin on Monday, March 14th; however, there is no way to know if there will be concrete solutions that develop.
So, what can we do?
1. We can be in prayer for the meeting that will take place on Monday!
2. You can still sign the petition! They have suggested that we need 250,000 signatures. I just checked and there are like right at 35,000!! So here is a super quick link. You can copy and paste it and send to everyone you know! It takes less than one minute to sign the petition that the Joint Council on International Children's Services has put online. They will deliver this
petition to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, so you need to act TODAY. Through
this simple act, your signatures will provide hope for the voiceless children of Ethiopia.

http://www.orphanpetition.org/

3. We can also just be praying for the country of Ethiopia as a whole. "At least one Christian was killed and others injured when thousands of Islamic extremists set fire to 59 churches and at least 28 homes in western Ethiopia in the past five days, Christian leaders said." This is very tragic. Here is the link to the article.

Please pray!

Here is the latest statement from JCICS that we have received. We also know that tomorrow morning an important caucus call with the US State Department, adoption agencies, and NGO's and advocacy groups involved in this whole situation will take place. Our agency is asking that we please pray for wisdom for all of these leaders as they talk about where to go from here.

Post from Tom DiFilipo, Executive Director of JCICS
March 9, 2011
Statement on Children and Family Services in Ethiopia
The work of Joint Council on International Children’s Services includes the development and implementation of the highest standards and ethical practices, the support of children living outside of family care and advocacy for permanency. As a leader in the international child welfare community, we are deeply concerned about the well-being of Ethiopian children and the integrity of the intercountry adoption process. Respecting Ethiopian culture and sovereignty, we offer the following for consideration as we collectively serve Ethiopian children and families and partner with others in supporting the efforts of the Government of Ethiopia.

Children need families – Who we are as human beings is largely influenced by our genes and our environment. The attention, affection, responsiveness, consistency, communication and interaction of a family have profound effects on all aspects of human development especially in the earliest stages of life. No institution, regardless of how well organized and funded it may be, can replace the nurturing, safety and guidance of a family.

Birth families need accessible, efficient and well-funded alternatives – Relinquishing a child is a painful decision for any birth parent or extended family member. This is especially true in remote and rural areas where few alternatives exist. If intercountry adoption is to decrease over time, birth families need accessible and reliable social service programs to support them. To date, many adoption service providers and other NGOs, are filling this gap in Ethiopia. Joint Council partner-members are contributing over 16 million per year to family preservation and community development programs that strive to keep vulnerable children and families together. They are assisting 1.2 million vulnerable individuals per year that otherwise would not receive these services.

Institutionalization can hurt children – Quotas and other drastic measures mean that children currently living in orphanages will reside in an institution longer. Sixty years of multinational human development research on institutionalized children, such as the Bucharest Early Intervention Study, indicates that the longer a child is in an orphanage the progressively worse their social, language, fine motor and gross motor skills become. Any change to the intercountry adoption process needs to carefully consider its effects on all children currently in orphanage care and the length of time newly institutionalized children will reside in the orphanage to complete their adoption process.

There are nearly 5 million orphaned children – This is nearly 13 percent of the child population in Ethiopia. These children need a family for love and support so they grow into productive adult members of our global community and retain their inherent human rights. There need to be support services for vulnerable children including adoption. At present, intercountry adoption only serves .001 percent of all orphaned children in Ethiopia. This fraction of a percentage, while rising, is not disproportionate to the number of children in need.

Various manners to combat corruption – Corruption is deplorable in all its forms especially when children’s lives are at stake. There are numerous manners to prevent, discourage, and punish corruption without punishing children, families of birth and adoptive families. A gardener who wants to beautify a landscape does not cut the weeds in his garden by a certain percent. Rather, he mindfully detects the weeds and eliminates them from the root up. A quota, no matter how small, will not eliminate corruption. It simply reduces the quantity of ethical violations that can occur in an environment. In fact corruption, like a weed, can actually grow in a restricted environment if it is allowed to exist.

Children with special needs deserve special consideration – Children with special needs require care and resources that are not easily given in an orphanage setting. According to research conducted by Joint Council, 40% of children adopted from Ethiopia are considered special needs. When contemplating new policies or procedures, children with special needs deserve expedited processes or exemptions whenever possible.

Intercountry adoption is one of many solutions that can successfully assist vulnerable children. Forty years of outcomes research indicates that intercountry adoption is a positive solution for most children. While there are several other programmatic alternatives that can be designed over time, it is one of the few permanent solutions currently available that situates children in the optimal environment to reach their full potential as human beings – a family.

Call to Action: Campaign for Ethiopia!

I haven't commented on the things that I've heard about Ethiopian adoptions lately because I wanted to wait until I heard everything from our agency. Today we received several updates but nothing is still for sure. They are still waiting to see the impact of everything and if it will become reality. If it does become reality, this will be very tragic. Please read the statement below from the Joint Council on International Children's Services and then scroll down to see how you can help. There is a link to a petition that will be forwarded to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Please, please share this blog or the links to the ways to support!

Statement on the Pending Reduction of Intercountry Adoption in Ethiopia

Last week the Ethiopian Ministry of Women’s, Children’s and Youth Affairs announced their intention to reduce intercountry adoptions by 90% beginning March 10, 2011. The Ministry’s plan for a dramatic reduction is apparently based on two primary issues; 1) the assumption that corruption in intercountry adoption is systemic and rampant and 2) the Ministry’s resources should be focused on the children for whom intercountry adoption is not an option. Without further announcements by the Government of Ethiopia, it is our understanding that the Ministry’s plan will be initiated this week.

The Ministry’s plan is a tragic, unnecessary and disproportionate reaction to concerns of isolated abuses in the adoption process and fails to reflect the overwhelmingly positive, ethical and legal services provided to children and families through intercountry adoption. Rather than eliminate the right of Ethiopian children to a permanent family, we encourage the Ministry to accept the partnerships offered by governments, NGOs, and foundations. Such partnerships could increase the Ministry’s capacity to regulate service providers and further ensure ethical adoptions.

The Ministry’s plan, which calls for the processing of only five adoption cases per work day, will result not only in systemic and lasting damage to a large sector of social services, but will have an immediate impact on the lives and futures of children. Moving from over 4,000 adoptions per year to less than 500 will result in thousands of children languishing in under-regulated and poorly resourced institutions for years. For those children who are currently institutionalized and legally available for adoption, the Ministry’s plan will increase their time languishing in institutions for up to 7-years.

Joint Council respectfully urges the Ministry of Women’s, Children’s and Youth Affairs to reconsider their plan and to partner with governments, NGOs and foundations to achieve their goals and avoid the coming tragedy for children and families.

Five Things You Can do to Help!
1) Sign the petition to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi – and pass it on!

2) Have you adopted from Ethiopia? Please send JCICS up to 3 photos and 50 words or less with what you would like the Ministry to know about your child – we’ll compile the information and send a book to the Ministry of Woman’s, Children’s and Youth Affairs. Send your photos and stories to advocate@jointcouncil.org by Sunday, March 12, 2011 to be included. Please note that sending photos and stories gives Joint Council unrestricted right to use the information you provide.

3) Share…Please send this Call to Action to family members, other adoptive parents, and everyone you know! Post, forward and share your adoption stories via Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. Make sure you include us in your posts so we can all hear your stories! Here’s links to our pages: Facebook, Twitter and our blog.

4) Stay informed: Get up-to-date information regarding the situation in Ethiopia by signing up to receive information from us: click here to do so, make sure you choose “country and issues specific information” and “Ethiopia.” And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and our blog!

5) Help ensure our advocacy can continue: Joint Council is a non-profit and receives no government funding. Please join us in ensuring more children live in safe, permanent and loving families. Donate today!

Passion: Here For You

So I thought I was back to 100% from being sick...turns out I'm not. I was so wiped out after a day at school. It was a good day at school but I was super tired. So I skipped a couple things I was planning on doing tonight to come home and rest. When I pulled up to the mailbox, I was soo excited because this is what was there waiting on me!

This is Passion's newest album from the Atlanta conference this past month. I watched parts of it since they streamed during the event and knew I wanted to pre-order a copy of the album when I heard that you could. These songs are so so worshipful and powerful. It came out today so go ahead and order a copy! It was exactly what I needed to hear tonight and a great surprise to find in my mailbox.

Also I watched a couple beautiful Gotcha Day videos today. Oh my goodness, you are gonna need Kleenex! It is so beautiful to see families come together!

http://vimeo.com/20685850

http://ourheritagefromthelord.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/our-video-2/

Much love,

7 years ago!

Sorry I haven't posted anything in over a week. My whole family has been sick! First, Isabel, then Brian, and now me. I'm feeling a little better but not great. BUT, I couldn't let today go by without posting a picture! Today is our anniversary! My husband and I have been married for 7 years! We met when we were in the 7th grade but didn't start dating until we both graduated from college. :) I wanna share the story but I'm still not feeling good and I have a lot of lessons to still get ready for tomorrow at school but I wanted to share our picture! It's my favorite. Our photographer took it as soon as we walked out the door of the church after we had just walked down the aisle! We're planning on celebrating next weekend when we are hoping that everyone is healthy