Colombia vs. Ethiopia- the process explained again :-)

So in a giant world changing nutshell, here is the major difference between Colombia and Ethiopia:

Colombia= travel right away but stay forever through court and immigration
Ethiopia= travel first trip once court is ready to finalize, come home for a bit to wait your turn at immigration

I love both processes, but in different ways. Colombia gave me a 3 month old little boy, but gave me a financial heart attack one day at a time while I was in Colombia living out of an ATM with the balance getting lower and lower and never knowing when I would come home with this baby. Ethiopia gives me timelines so I can plan financially and efficiently, but I miss part of my sons life while that happens. Do I wish I was with him right now? YES. Am I occasionally glad they don't give me the choice to stay there in Africa for what would have been 2-3 months of court process ($10-20,000 dollars!!!???). Kinda.

So the big question I get all the time: WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BRING HIM HOME NEXT WEEK??

The $3,000 answer: It takes a few weeks to obtain the fancy document resulting from next weeks court case that shows that we are the parents. Once that's done, it will take a few weeks to obtain his Ethiopian passport and the new birth certificate of his Sibley-ness. Now here is when it gets annoying, because of the additional investigation to ensure there was no funny business AND the fact that the United States Embassy doesn't have enough workers, we will wait for a few more weeks after that for our space in line to be processed. Hopefully someday they will have this 2 trip process streamlined so that you can come over for court and stay 3-4 weeks and do it in one big trip... which is basically what Colombia has going on. The thing is, Colombia doesn't have the orphan crisis that Ethiopia has to deal with. The numbers are just crazy.

So, God was gracious to me, and let me return home with my empty arms to a gorgeous Christmas season with my 2.5 year old boy and the people I love. No doubt I will be missing my baby BIG TIME. There will be tears and I give myself permission for that... BUT.. they will be the tears of this legal mother. As the legal mother, if he should get very ill or there is a natural disaster, the United States embassy can ship him to me or allow me to get him in an emergency. I haven't had that right until next week. I can also know that he WILL be coming home, maybe not the end of January as I'd like, but he WILL be getting here because he is MINE :-) There are a lot of people that have had court in the 2nd half of November and a good batch the week before me. All of those people are ahead of me in line for embassy appointments. It would be LOVELY for some of those people to get their papers done super fast so that maybe they could get out of my way in the December dates!! I'm sure they would love that too. We will just have to see how fast the Ethiopian courts can get their stuff going.

The first batch of 2 trip families went to court at the end of September and beginning of October and they are there picking up their children right now. They all waited 6-8 weeks to go back. If I can get back that quickly all depends on the people in front of me since only 20 are processed per month (10 every other week).

Please pray for us in this process. I'll try to write again before the airport on Thursday morning :-)