Tick Tock

Well, it has officially been one month since the last referral from our agency. I bet some of you were thinking I was just lazy and hadn't posted in a while :) Very good guess if you know me well. Actually, I heard a few things from one of my yahoo groups that made me start to worry. They said Ethiopia closed their adoptions to Australia. Those poor people on the wait list!

So, I emailed the nice lady at IAN and asked if everything was ok. She said not to worry. It seems that Ethiopia requires agencies to give humanitarian aid in return for being able to adopt. Australia is not run by agencies but works government to government. They are not willing to pay humanitarian aid to Ethiopia so they pulled the plug. She assured me that it would not happen to America because several thousand dollars of our agency fee goes to help the orphanages.

She also explained that every year, the courts in Ethiopia close for a few months for the rainy season. After they have opened, we have tons of families that have passed court and are waiting to travel in December or January. The orphanage and care center are full and not able to bring in new children. I heard sometimes the orphanage will sleep two or three in a bed. Once the families start picking up their children, then our list should start moving again. We are with a very, very small agency and I've counted 15-20 families that are waiting for the embassy date to travel. I'm really hoping this slow time will be followed by a ton of referrals!

I am very excited for all the families at IAN that are going to see their new children soon. I can't wait to be that close!