Ethiopian courts re-open, interview assigned, and we hit a delay

Ethiopian courts re-opened on October 6th. We received a wonderful email a few days later that Trent's case was assigned an interview date on October 22nd. The interview is a repeat of the same investigation that was done with the embassy in July, except this time instead of the American embassy investigating, it is the Ethiopian court process due process.

We kept busy and began to really plan for our trip to Ethiopia, as it was always possible we would be traveling soon after this interview took place and we did not want to be caught surprised.

We waited or news of the interviews success on 10/23 but successful news we did not receive :-( The court was unwilling to hear our case or accept our agencies supplemental documents because the Ministry of Women's Youth, and Children's Affairs (henceforth called MOWYCA) had not prepared their letter of consent for the court. No need for shock and horror. This happens a LOT. It happened in Ben's case as well as about half of my friends cases. The difference, is that this past fall and spring while my friends were going through the process, the courts were allowing cases to be heard still, and they would give MOWYCA a deadline to turn in their stuff. Usually MOWCYA got it done about a week later as best I can tell from many of my friends timelines.

But they changed the rule.

Now MOWYCA must have their stuff there BEFORE our case can be heard. MOWYCA was on trainings through last week, so starting Monday my agency has promised to pester them, letting them know this child's case is sitting there until they write their letter that was due before 10/22. Even if we get the letter in the next few weeks, it is likely this will cost us about a month of processing time. We need to get the letter and then re-apply for our case be heard again, and those things tend to be scheduled a few weeks out. We are really hoping this can happen in November and that I can hopefully travel sometime in December.

This stinks for Trent, and it stinks because it is also pushing me into holiday airfare time and means I will likely miss out on holidays with the boys, but it does give us some really good time to prepare our home, hearts, and physical bodies for the task that lies ahead, and it is a big task.

So now... we wait. We just wait for the email that says we have our MOWYCA comments and a new court date to go with it.

This is what we have been doing while we wait, besides ordering a whole lot of stuff on amazon to prepare our home.

We did handstands

We sent people to school

We visited the Ozarks with some very special friends

We ran some races and hunted pumpkins too!!

It was even possible for me to sneak away for 2 days to the beach of Galveston, TX to collect myself before the tasks of the Fall really set in.


Please keep us in your prayers in the next few weeks as we wait for news on the letter from MOWYCA, and you will know as soon as we know that our case can move forward for little Trenton, holding steady at 30 lbs!