The long awaited for glitch

In intercountry adoption there is always a glitch. With J., it was the fact that his birthmom had two different last names in his paperwork, so his US immigration papers were held up for nearly seven months as we had to prove that these two women were actually one and the same woman. It got worked out. I had to cry and beg and cause a small scene at my local friendly USCIS office, but they're used to that. Believe me, I've seen a lot of weeping and begging at that office.

With baby #3? Our agency may have to close down its Ethiopia program indefinately to restructure. There's a complicated story here, obviously, but I don't want to get into rumors and hear-say. I really don't know the full story anyway. But I do strongly believe that all the parties involved, Love Basket and the Ethiopian contact, have the best interest of the children in mind. I truly believe it is simply a miscommunication, maybe a difference of opinion on matching procedure. Whatever the reason though, unless our agency and their on the ground contacts can work out this confusion, the program will have to close until a new contact can be found and prodecures are re-written. I commend our agency for contacting its families ahead of time, and warning us that they may have to do the right thing to ensure transparency and ethics in adoption.

What does this mean for us? Well, we are waiting along with several other families for three weeks to see what transpires in Ethiopia. All could go well, and our process would continue as planned. If the next three weeks doesn't go well, then we'll have to switch agencies. That equals=loss of money, loss of time, basically this adoption going God's way and not Tiffany's way which always takes awhile for me to take a liking to. Grrrr....

Please pray with us that things are resolved quickly for the best interest of the children. Placement is life or death for many orphans in Africa, and delays like this, though God is in control of them, well...I just don't see how it's good for anyone other than teaching Tiffany patience and subservience. I'd hate to think I was learning this life lesson at the expense of a child. I really had my heart set on this baby coming home in the early summer, and now I need to accept that God's plan may be very different than that.

On a different note, Thank You, Tiffany Shaw, for taking our Christmas pictures this weekend! One of the pics she took is here. I'm saving the best for Christmas cards and later posts. The full color ones of the family in the leaves are fabulous!

And, PLEASE tell me what you see when you log onto my blog! Specifically, my header. It should be a black and white photo of Caleb holding my hand when he was 3 days old. It should say, "Namaste" on the top, and a few sentences of what that greeting means to me on the bottom. It should be BIG. The same way it has looked for a year. It still looks like this on Tim's mac and on my friend's pc. But on my computer, looking at it right now, it's just a sliver of what it once was. Very strange, and I don't know how to change it. This just happened yesterday out of nowhere. So tell me, BIG or sliver???

Happy December, by the way!