"leaving on a jet plane....don't know when I'll be back again...."
"bought a one way ticket on an [east] bound [plane]..." (I just change Leann's lyrics a little to fit our situation!)
In case you haven't guessed already, our flights are booked!!! And yes, they are one-way tickets!!!! After a lot of thought and prayer, we are planning (Lord willing) for our whole family to stay in Ethiopia until we are able to bring "A" home, instead of breaking it up into 2 trips!! (Some of you know, Jon's parents are coming too, but they do have return tickets!)
On May 6, we received the call from AWAA that we had been assigned a court date for June 4, which meant we needed to be in Ethiopia by June 1! Most of the rest of that day was spent emailing & calling a travel agent, who found us good deals on tickets for May 29.
May 29 = Jon's Birthday, and also the 1 year anniversary of accepting A's referral!
God's timing = wow!
So, our basic schedule is.....May 29 leave from Harrisburg to Dulles to Addis Ababa. We will arrive on the 30th, at 7-something Ethiopian time. We will be able to visit with A at our agency's Transition Home each day, and then after we pass court on the 4th, we will have full custody of him, and he will come live with us at the guest house. Typically it takes 3-5 weeks after court to gather the needed documents to submit to Embassy. Once we submit to embassy, it will be several days and then we will be able to come home. We have no way of knowing how long we will be in Ethiopia, which is kind of scary but we are trusting God has a plan for that too!
Here are a few things we would love you to be praying about....
*Because of our longer stay, we needed to apply for a different type of visa - so right now, we have no passports :) They should make it back in plenty of time, but it just gives me an uneasy feeling!
*"A" needs to have some medical testing done and have the right results in order to come home! If the results are not what we anticipate, it would delay things many more months and of course our plans would drastically change.
*Our fingerprints expire mid-July. I have talked to our officer at USCIS and she told me she would resubmit our fingerprints. I am anxiously awaiting something in the mail that would tell us if she was able to resubmit our last fingerprints or if that is something we will need to get done before we leave.
*Pray for our little guy's heart. We know he is SO excited to come to America and have a family, but please, always remember that adoption begins with huge losses, and is really bittersweet. We are excited about all the time we will have while still in Ethiopia to bond & attach before we come home to life in America.
*There are so many little things that need to be done before we leave, even silly things like hanging pictures on his walls and buying him shoes, that I was expecting to have time to do in-between trips. Pray that all the little things come together! :)
*And of course.....at least a month in Ethiopia?! Honestly it's a dream come true for me. But there are definitely lots of obvious prayer requests that go along with it, especially when considering there will be 5 of us!
Thanks so much for your continued prayers!
