Ethiopia Program Update

Last week we shared some news about the Ethiopian government announcing their intentions to reduce inter-country adoptions by 90% beginning in early March.  These changes wouldn’t affect adoptive families receiving referrals (being “matched” with their child), but it would potentially lengthen the time it takes for these children to be cleared by the Ethiopian government and granted a court date to process the adoption (ie- folks may be waiting for quite a while with a picture on their fridge but unable to go bring home their baby).  This change is so new that nobody knows all the implications, but we wanted to pass along a little bit of information we recently received from our adoption agency.  Our initial reaction is that this is positive news! 

·         Children’s Hope International (CHI) has been in contact with their in-country staff and has participated in several meetings with the US State Department, Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS), and other Ethiopia adoption agencies.  Initial conversations between entities in Ethiopia and state side have been positive, and it has been established that while the notice of going down to 5 cases a day has been issued, the Ethiopian government has not implemented any procedures on how this reduction would affect cases at any stage.

·         There are indications that the Ethiopian government may increase the daily number of cases reviewed, but at this time they have not issued an exact number.

·         Since the initial notice went into effect on March 10^th, CHI has had several court cases approved and has seen three families receive dates for their court cases.

·         Overall, the Children’s Hope Ethiopia Team is receiving encouraging and positive news and are hopeful that a decision will be reached that will best benefit the children of Ethiopia.

A Sigh of Relief and A Heavy Heart

Well, our homestudy visits are complete, and we have every reason to believe that our family and home found favor with the social worker (she hopes to have the thing written up for us by the end of March).  As far as I know, she didn’t notice the cobwebs in the corners of the cornice boards or the dried food in Ellie’s highchair crevasses.  The boys were on their very best, non potty-mouthed behavior.  Our unruly ogre dog refrained from her normal antics.  It was like us on our very best day (which thankfully only needed to last for about 45 minutes). 

While we are tremendously relieved to have our homestudy done, there is something that is falling like deadweight upon us.  A couple weeks ago, the Ethiopian Ministry of Women’s, Children's, and Youth Affairs (they’re the ones responsible for checking into the background and “clearing” each child who is referred to an adoptive family) announced their intention to reduce inter-country adoptions by 90% beginning March 10, 2011.  The Ministry’s plan for this dramatic change is reportedly based on their assumption that corruption is a systemic and rampant part of international adoption, and the belief that their resources should be focused on the children for whom international adoption is not an option.  This change, if permanent, has the potential to drastically increase the length of the adoption process in Ethiopia.

Lots of people in the adoption world are weighing in on this news.  Many of them see this action as an unnecessary and disproportional response to the current situation.  We are certainly the first in line to stand against child-trafficking.  There are some ugly people out there whose intentions are purely evil.  If even one family in Ethiopia has been incented or coerced to sell their child, that is too many.  However, we sincerely believe that there are a great, great number of ethical, servant-hearted adoption agencies at work in Ethiopia, and we believe that there is a way to allow these organizations to continue to work while simultaneously going after the bad guys.

In truth, this change is so new that nobody knows all the implications, and there aren’t good answers to our questions about how this will change things for us.  The Joint Council on International Children’s Services has started a petition to be sent to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia regarding this recent decision.  In a little over one week, it has garnered over 38,000 signatures (including ours).  If you are interested, you may access it here: http://betheanswerforchildren.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/emergency-campaign-for-ethiopia/

We are concerned and anxious about our lack of control in this situation and about how this decision may functionally act as a death sentence for many adoptable children in Ethiopia (a country were 1 in 6 children die before age 5 - these are just children in general, let alone orphans).  But, thankfully, we know that the God we serve is in control of the situation in Ethiopia and that he loves each one of these kids so very much.

We will continue to pray for the orphans in Ethiopia, and around the world, who so desperately need families.  And, we would invite you to so, as well.

Our Homestudy

We have been in the midst of our homestudy process for the past two months.  Basically, it has consisted of the following: our going for an initial consultation appointment; our completing three inches of paperwork; our getting fingerprinted, investigated and background-checked; our groveling before some friends (and family) regarding their provision of reference letters; our rewarding the aforementioned friends and family with ice cream; our meeting individually with the social worker; our meeting jointly with the social worker; our inviting the social worker to come inspect our home.

Now, I’ve been a parent for a while now (and some might even argue that I’ve been a moderately good one).  However, nothing will rattle your cage like having your childhood, your marriage, your parenting techniques, your children, and your home dissected scrutinized studied. 

I was telling the boys the other day that the social worker would be coming to our house on Monday (tomorrow).  I said, “Hey guys, in a few days an adoption helper will be coming to our house to check it out and make sure it’s a good place for a baby to live, and she’ll want to get to know us to make sure we can be a good family for a baby.”  Our eldest son said, “Well, I hope we’re a good family for a baby because we already have a baby.”  Good point. 

I went on to say, “When the adoption helper is here, I want you guys to do your very best job of being respectful.  She will have some questions for you, so look at her eyes when you are talking to her.  Use your kind words.”  Our three year-old  added, “Yeah, and don’t say potty-talk like ‘underwear, poopy, and toot’”.  I stopped him there, before he exhausted his entire list of “potty-talk,” and agreed that he was right on track regarding the impropriety of such language in this situation.  So there you have it…I don’t know what the social worker is going to ask the kids, but I’d say there’s about a 50% chance that they work some type of bathroom reference into their answer.

Seriously, we invite and appreciate your prayers for the visit tomorrow afternoon.

Sarah

Rolling the plan out

Forgive our blogging hiatus…remember at the beginning when I said that I didn’t have time to write a blog?  Well, that was before 15 hours of pre-adoptive training and a three year-old with a ruptured appendix (it’s been a whirlwind couple weeks around here!!).

So, for the final installment of our adoption backstory…by fall 2010, we had a new baby in our arms and another in our hearts.  We had told a few close friends about our plans to adopt.  And, the various friends and acquaintances we had “interviewed” (other adoptive families) knew about our journey; however, we hadn’t told our kids yet or our extended family.

In November 2010, we told our boys (then age 3 and 5) that we were planning to become an adoptive family.  Their responses were priceless and worthy of a separate post sometime later.  Suffice it to say, they were supportive and excited.

We went on to tell our small group and our extended family in November.  We were blessed by their interest, support, and encouragement.  We are surrounded by some good people.

And, that about wraps it up.  We met with an adoption outreach consultant for Children’s Hope International in December 2010.  We completed our application and it was accepted by CHI in January 2011.  The subsequent months were filled with paperwork and more paperwork.  And, here I sit in March writing a blog.

Sarah

A Break in the Action

In looking back over the chain of events, there was a lull in the action from about March through September 2010….on the adoption front, that is…there were plenty of other things going on around here during that time.  We had a baby.  She’s pretty great.

 

Ethiopia, Here We Come

Haiti was out of the running as our adoption destination.  We continued to talk with three adoption agencies, asking them about the areas/countries with greatest need and clarifying which countries would accept us as prospective adoptive parents based on our family demographics.  Ethiopia came up in those conversations repeatedly. 

Hmm…Ethiopia.  Along with our small group, we had been financially sponsoring two children from Ethiopia for the better part of three years through the organization Food for the Hungry.  However, if given an unlabeled map of the world, I could no sooner put my finger on Ethiopia than Armenia.  I had, obviously, heard about Ethiopia on the news over the course of my lifetime, the very name of the country ringing synonymous in my head with famine and starvation.  Was it possible that this was where God was leading us?

Ryan dove into research mode and became very well-informed about the worldwide orphan crisis and the orphan statistics in Ethiopia, specifically.  As a refresher, here’s what he learned… Ethiopia is one of the four poorest countries in the world, with 80% of the population living on less than $2/day.  There are ~5 million orphans in Ethiopia (which is one in every nine children).  Because of the extreme poverty in the country (and the resulting disease and malnutrition), 1 in 10 children die before their first birthday, and 1 in 6 children die before age 5.

When Ryan shared these statistics with me and said that he was really interested in adopting from Ethiopia, I think my response went something like, “Ethiopia is a long way away…How many hours would that be by plane...What?!!  1 in 6??!!  That’s just not acceptable.  We’ll go.”

So, Ethiopia it would be.  By this time, we had narrowed our search to two adoption agencies.  They both seemed like really wonderful organizations.  In an effort to decide between the two, we talked with families who had used each agency.  Both families had great things to say about their respective agencies.  Finally, we decided upon Children’s Hope International as the agency on which we would rely to help us facilitate our adoption.

Sarah

Would it be Haiti?

As we initially researched countries from which we might adopt, we immediately leaned toward Haiti.  As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti had a tremendous need for adoptive families for its 400,000 orphans.  Plus, its proximity to the United States made it seem logistically reasonable for us to invest more time and personal resources into that country in the future, as was our intention in the country from which we would adopt (in the form of mission trips, child sponsorships, funding water wells, taking our entire family to visit the homeland of our youngest child, etc). 

However, we ran into a little wrinkle for which I was unprepared; Haiti didn’t want us.  Each country that is “open” to American families for adoption, has its own requirements for adoptive couples.  Haiti required adoptive parents to be at least 35 years-old and accepted families with no more than 2 children already in the home.  (Because quite obviously, having a perky 33 year-old mother would be a detriment to any kid, and having three siblings would be quite a bit more dangerous to the overall well-being of a child than living 18 years in an impoverished institution.  Forgive my sarcasm… I’m sure Haitian officials thought through these requirements thoroughly and had good reasons for them).  We continued to talk with various agencies about Haiti, hoping that someone would deem us worthy parents and know of a legal loophole which would allow us to adopt from that country. 

Then on January 12, 2010, the devastating earthquake hit that country.  Our hearts absolutely broke as we watched the images and heard the stories coming out of that country, knowing that we had such a deep desire to help, even one of these desperate, dying children.  We hoped, for a moment, that this tragedy might prompt the country to ease their adoption “restrictions” so that we, and other prospective adoptive families like us, might be able to help serve the sudden, tragic influx of orphans.  However, in an effort to protect against child-trafficking and improve a federal adoption regulatory system that was already rather broken and inefficient, adoptions out of Haiti were halted.  We took this as clear confirmation to pursue another country.

Sarah