Trent Update: A "Retroactive" MOWYCA ruling for old cases

So here is that blog post that I have been avoiding writing this week.. because then I'd have to.. ya know.. talk about it.

I received an update within a few days of my blog post back before Thanksgiving and more since then. A few days after Thanksgiving, MOWYCA did finally have our "comments" letter. Our agency had been going to the office bugging for our comments every day. The issue? We received a "negative" comment. This about sent me through the roof until I understood what they meant by "negative". A better description would really be "incomplete file with new regulations we just implemented and made retroactive to old cases".

So what does that mean?
The "regulation" MOWYCA rolled out which effects all children that were considered internationally adoptable before April 2014 (Trent hit that clearance in April 2013 before we even traveled for Sammy) is an additional letter to the Regional MOWYCA clearance from the village of his birth stating that there is no domestic way to parent this child in Ethiopia. This new regulation is now effecting a lot of people, especially those of us that are matched with children from "waiting child" lists that have been waiting for families to step up for awhile. I am not in this boat alone.

The day after our agency got that news, Trent's current orphanage, Miskaye in Addis Ababa where he has been in "holding" since becoming internationally adoptable in 2013 created the needed letter and this letter as well as a social worker flew to Benishangul Gumuz Region, on the border of Sudan, to his birth village of Assosa to file this request with the region of his birth to obtain the new piece of "file" that will satisfy the new regulation.

Of course, that week was a national holiday and the office never opened. Turns out the office wasn't open last week either. No one knows when it WILL open for us to file our request. Good times huh? Our agency is hopeful the office will be open again this week and we pray that his birth region will produce this for us so we can move forward. Once we produce what Federal MOWYCA wants (isn't it fun that federal MOWYCA and state level MOWYCA are the ones trying to appease each other?) we should then have "positive" comments on his adoption file and be able to have the interview that should have occurred back on 10/22. When that is done, we will be in business to fly.

So yeah.. quite the string of bummer news.. but these are the things that happen in international adoption. It's not done until you are on the plane home.. and we veterans know that is really just the beginning of "intense rehab" for a little person that has been through too much.

THIS IS HOW YOU CAN HELP ME: Do not be negative at me about this process!!! Complaining about the Ethiopian government and pity parties for my son are not helpful. This doesn't change anything and it really just brings down the person who is choosing joy in this process (me). Things will be much harder while we are engaging him in his grief and adjusting to our new normal when we are home. Right now, my kids go to bed every night and my husband and I can go on dates. As a family of 5 we are in a great place and we are determined to enjoy it. Maybe after a year of 5 different foster children in our home, maybe we NEED this peaceful Christmas with our children. Do I want Trent home?? Of course I do. Can I do anything to change the situation? Nope. My job is to be faithfully preparing to be his mother and that is what I am doing.

I would love an update from my agency to hear that the BG office is moving this week. Let's pray for that! In the meantime, this is what we are doing around here.



We picked up our giant tree after Thanksgiving and saw Santa too!



We went for an extra special trip to "Build a Bear" where we made some new Rudolphs!



I also survived "cooking decorating" night.



Moving forward, please pray for Trent's case. We shouldn't be held up too long waiting for the new document as long as everyone is reasonable to work together. We are praying for news, and of course we are always praying for his spirit and his development and health. Please join us in prayer for our son to be able to come home.

Trent's case still on hold: Waiting for MOWYCA's recommendation letter....

Shortly after I wrote the previous update last month, we got notice from our agency that the court had given MOWYCA a second deadline to have their comments written and ready for the courts. This was November 8th. Our staff went to MOWYCA to pick them up and they were still not done.

Usually when this happens, the courts don't assign a 3rd deadline. They just wait for MOWYCA to catch up. So for now we are just hanging and waiting for this important piece of paper. Although there are very few cases being processed by my agency right now, it sounds like the other agencies in Ethiopia are experiencing the same delay. MOWYCA was in a lot of trainings and people just weren't in the office working so there is a big backlog. Luckily, they don't do Thanksgiving over there and Ethiopian Christmas isn't until January (different calendar again) so holiday season doesn't seem to be an issue moving forward.

So basically, we just wait. Until we have that letter, we can't get assigned a new "important interview" date for people from Trent's past, and until that interview happens we can't get our date to fly. As much as I would have loved to have him here with us at Christmas, and there may be some tears on that fact from me during the holidays, there is some peace that the current citizens of America Sibley boys can enjoy a holiday with Mom and Dad's full attention.

Lucas, Ben, and Sammy have had a year of 5 different homeless children up in their personal space for long periods of time. They have been brave and have literally shared everything they have, especially their Mom and Dad's energy.

Our most recent little man went home on November the 18th (sob). We miss him, we love him, and I found a little present he left me this morning jammed into our printer. He was a bit obsessed with our printer in a rather inconvenient way. This isn't the forum to talk openly about that case, but we loved him and his sister and we loved them and advocated for them well for 4 months. We did everything there was to do and now we release them to their biological families and Jackson county to move forward, hopefully toward a healthy and nurturing home life. Holy goodness, I miss them.

Sob.

So for now we pray for those that have been part of our family only temporarily and we pray for those yet to get here.



We are hopeful for more news on our case in the next few weeks. Until then, we will enjoy this holiday season and continue to prayer to be the best parents possible for Trent.

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!

PAIR Letter Received and Submitted to Ethiopian court!

We have more quick movement on little Trenton's case, and we are so thankful!

I greet you from our rustic rental cabin at Lake of the Ozarks. We had planned a little 2 day family time before school starts for Lucas next week. It has been an eventful past week, as we added a little girl to our temporary care. We took her little brother in last month. We anticipate we will be helping this family up until school starts for their district. The kids are doing wonderfully considering their circumstance. 4 of the kids are outside with Ted doing cannonballs into the lake and I'm inside her with Sammy making sure he is getting a little rest (that will greatly enhance his ice cream experience later today).

ANYWAY

We received our physical Pre-Adoption Immigration Review (PAIR) letter in the mail on July 29th. We think we received ours so quickly because we live rather close to the national benefits center so it didn't spend as many days in snail mail. The next morning, I made a trip with all 4 boys to the capital of Missouri, Jefferson City, which is about 2 hours away from us to make sure everything that i needed to send with the letter was state authenticated properly. Considering I had to enter a state capital building with 4 crazy little boys I think things worked out rather well. I quickly returned home to organize everything to overnight a packet via Fed Ex to Washington DC where a courier that Holt contracts with named Ray would do some legwork for me. Ray spent the next few days authenticating my letter Federally as well as with the Ethiopian embassy. There is nothing remarkable looking about this rather sacred letter. No raised seal or obvious original signatures. It probably wouldn't be that hard to replicate if someone wanted to put their head to it, that is why all of the extra authenticating is necessary. There are specific numbers on it relating to my case that need to check out in a computer somewhere.

It was later that afternoon that I needed to pick up little girl as well. I thought surely I didn't have enough on my plate that day, that it meant total logical sense for another homeless child to move in. CLEARLY. I was a bit stressed. Stressed or not, all 5 kids as well as myself got the first packet to Fedex for its overnight journey to DC. Following a few days of authentication, our letter left DC in another Fed Ex envelope and just left the Fed Ex hub in Memphis, TN. It will arrive in Addis Ababa to our Holt contact on Monday.

Because we were able to send a copy of our clearance letter to the Ethiopian staff, we were looking forward to being submitted to court in Ethiopia to start the last half of Trent's legal journey.

I just received the email that we were officially submitted to Ethiopian court on Wednesday, August 6th.

SO ERIN, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??

It means this: We only have 2 more hurdles to clear before I am invited to fly and meet my son. One little setback is that the Ethiopian courts close every year for the majority of August and September for the rainy season. It is hard to do business in that time of year because it downpours every day. The power goes out and roads are washed out etc. It is hard for people to arrive for their set appointments, so they just close up shop to some degree each year and re-open when the weather is more likely to cooperate. We had the same thing happy during Ben's process in 2010 so we are used to this and expected it.

OKAY ERIN, I NOW UNDERSTAND RAINY SEASON, BUT WHAT WERE THOSE 2 HURDLES?
Ethiopian court will now go through our translated dossier from January and Trent's information that was already cleared by PAIR. Before Ted and I receive our invitation to come meet Trent and testify before the court that we want to be his parents, Ethiopia needs to

1: Re-interview the woman very central to his case (who was already interviewed by the US embassy a few weeks ago as part of his PAIR investigation) to make sure everything still is as she has been saying it was all along..

and 2: Ministry Of Women, Youth, and Children's Affairs.. who I will further refer to as MOWYCA (Colombian friends, think "Bienstar")has to write a letter to the court consenting to his adoption. I am not concerned that they will not consent to his adoption, as we already have a letter as part of his PAIR documents by the regional head of MOWYCA for his birth area to please be released for adoption and "preserve his life" (woah. HEAVY). it is just a thing that has to get to court in order for us to pass. Some of you remember, this is one of the reasons we didn't pass court on one of Ben's many court dates. Sometimes they are slow and it just doesn't get there when its supposed to.

In the good news I received this morning on court submission, our agency said that interviews for "important people in the case" are still taking place during the closure (YAY!!) so it is possible that part of things will be done before the court re-opens. I don't know, however, if MOWYCA is issuing any comments during the closure. We may have to wait until October for those when things re-open.

Once our authenticated PAIR letter lands in Ethiopia on Monday and our agency runs it over, and the interview is completed and the MOWCYA comments letter is added to our case... we will be invited to fly and meet our son.

WWWWWHHHHHHAAAATTT???

A year ago TODAY I applied for the Ethiopian program, assuming I would be waiting a few years. Assuming we would do OUR thing. I didn't know he was sitting on a "find me a family" aka "waiting child" list for over a year. He had been sitting there all along, ready to go. All of this has happened sooner and smoother than we anticipated.. and we have been blessed in odd and unexpected ways financially to be prepared to take This on so quickly after bringing Sam home last year. All of those things added together tell me that Trent is supposed to have a Mom and a Dad and that he has been provided for this whole time. I have just been along for the ride, trying to be obedient as possible in the process.

I will be staying in between our court date and our final clearance from the Embassy. We anticipate I will be living in Africa about a month. Maybe a little more, but likely not less. Every one of those days will be spent snuggling Trent and learning to communicate with him. He has been in an orphanage for years. Of course, he had a mother and birth family at one point, but we don't know how much of that world remains in his conscious mind.

Ted and I were just talking in the car this morning.. how last Christmas I was finalizing our dossier, never dreaming that someone could be here before Christmas 2014. My mom tells me about how her pregnancy with me was so short in her mind because she was a bit in denial through most of it (I was planned ya'll, just not so close to my older brother as I ended up being). That is how I feel. I purposefully didn't emotionally engage in this adoption because I expected such a hard process with PAIR. I'll probably be on the plane in October and be in shock that all of this has happened. Clearly, Trent is supposed to be here, with all that should have been stacked against him. We don't think this is because we have been more obedient or prayerful or whatever than anybody else. I think God is very present in messy adoption situations as well (as we experienced in the past with Ben where we hit quite a few snags that tested my faith and where I put my hope). Some of my dear friends have hit every snag possible when PAIR first started and many of them received referrals many months or almost a year before mine in some cases and are just now coming home.

So it looks like we will be hanging another stocking on the mantle this year at Christmas everyone, because this little lad may be coming home SOON... and he will have the snuggliest fuzziest Christmas jammies EVER :-)

Trenton update: I say "PAIR!!!" you way "waaahhhh??"

Okay adoption junkies, it's time for class. What is this "PAIR" that I keep speaking of? It stands for:

Pre-
Adoption
Immigration
Review

aka PAIR. Back in the olden days, you would get a referral. Wait around weeks/months for all of your "stuff" of your file and kiddos to be put together and submitted to Ethiopian court. For Ben in 2010 this took 2.5 months. Then you receive a court date. For Ben, that was 4 months post referral to appear before the court in Ethiopia. At that time you hope that all of the stuff is at the right spot at the right time for you to pass. This was when Ben's process went all wonky and we were in limbo for another 6 months before we finally did pass 10 months post referral. In his case, we were submitted to embassy quickly after, and just happened to "clear" quickly. For other families in recent history, that wasn't the case. They would go through the entire process with Ethiopian court, only for the US Embassy to find fraud in their case and deny the child a visa to the USA (as should happen when fraud is found, but how heartbreaking for all involved).

It was after those fraud issues occurred that the United States decided to shake things up last year. Now, with PAIR, all of the investigating is done BEFORE things are submitted to court. My dossier and all of Trents stuff are sitting in Ethiopia right now at my agencies office, waiting for the magical "PAIR" letter, which states that the USA found no fraud and green lights for all. That investigation is what is happening right now for Trent.

I was able to get through to my immigration officer a week ago Monday to verify that she did indeed have my file, and that I would be ever so helpful in any way I could should she need anything or have any questions. It is normal(about 80% of the time) for folks to receive an "RFE" which is a Request for Evidence. I have received 3 in total in my adoption experiences for a few tiny little things that held things up and resolved. I spoke to her on Monday July 14th, and she said that I was on her stack for "this week". woot woot.

I woke to an email the morning of July 16th that my documents had been uploaded to the US Embassy in Ethiopia (Embassy in Ethiopia is always at work when we are sleeping folks!). There was fist pumping. This means we didn't receive an RFE in our first round and passed through!!

Our I604 "investigation of orphan status" had begun!!

Then a bit of a downer. I awoke to another email on Thursday morning, informing me that 2 documents would need to be amended. These were small fixes and nothing to be alarmed about... they don't smell of fraud etc.. just an Ethiopian vs American calendar issue (Ethiopia runs off of the Gregorian calendar which is 7 years behind us. One doc said it had been issued in 2006 rather than 2013). So right now, an important interview of someone close to his case as well as those 2 documents are being worked on by the staff in Ethiopia.

Please continue to keep his investigation and his little self in your prayers. We hope to see some movement in the weeks to come either with the interview or these documents being resubmitted.

Thanks ya'll :-)

Trenton Eskedar Sibley.. waiting for pick up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia :-)

***I wrote this a few weeks back....*****

So I get to greet you today in a moment of peace :-)

Ben fell asleep on the couch. Sammy is resting in his space. Lucas is watching a horrible super hero movie he earned and if I tell you the name you will judge me.

I just ate a rather awesome mango that made me miss Bogota.

You know what else? I'm PREGNANT... Sibley style :-) and I DIDN'T TELL YOU.. unless I did in person and shoved adorable pictures of my 4th son in your face over the course of the last few months. I see that my last post was in February while we were still caring for one of our little people with Safe Families. At that point we were fighting for this guy, but we didn't have our "yes".

So.. getting back to this whole pregnancy thing :-)

A matter of days after turning in our dossier on 1/10/14 we were looking through the Ethiopia "waiting child" list with our agency. Sidebar: we should be, like, BANNED from doing stuff like that. There he was, little man, smiling back at us from the screen with a description that wasn't exactly a "big seller". Severe delays. Possibly deaf. Incontinent. Nonverbal. According to their description he wasn't doing much but sitting on the floor at 4 years old... but there was this thread of friends of mine on our agencies Ethiopia facebook group that had met and played with this child.. and he understands. He plays. He walks. He even runs a little bit. It is entirely possibly that this child's mental delays and physical issues are consistent with a person that didn't get at all what God intended for the first 4 years of his life. He was abandoned early on and obviously disabled since. What is unclear at this time is whether the disabilities are an actual brain injury, or what the human body does when its needs are not met in any way for a prolonged period of time. So there we were.. confronted with this little person who had already been on a website for almost a year.. where anyone in the continental United States could have volunteered and fought to be his Mommy.. and he fit the paper we wrote.. that had already been approved and was on its way to Ethiopia already.

We looked at each other and we took a deep breath.. and we wrote the letter. The last time we "wrote the letter" we got Sam.

We wrote the letter and we waited. We called. We annoyed. We even learned later on that the reason they didn't return our calls at first was because they thought I was a crazy person (having already 3 little boys and at the time Sammy home for less than a year) and they needed to verify with the Missouri branch director that I was indeed NOT insane.. and that we really did have the logistical ability to parent a child with significant disabilities (which, by the way, they had already APPROVED ME FOR.. but people seemed to forget that part?). Then once the dialogue of the committee process got rolling we jumped through more hoops. For the 6 weeks this all dragged on I did get a bit annoyed.. I did. It was 6 weeks his case wasn't moving and we and he were paper ready for it to do that. In hindsight, I get it. Many adoption agencies in the past, and even present, let good hearted people bite off more than they could or should parent.. and it sets them up to fail. They needed to make sure that I knew what I was talking about and I knew what I was asking for. My response to their question about what the first year home with Trent would look like? "It's going to suck.. it's going to suck bad. I am going to go into a hole and think I"ll never come out (but I will). My husband and I will be ground down to the wire and 1 kid will regress and emotionally grieve, one will have super sensory behaviors and poop himself, and another will give up sleeping until he feels more secure.. all the while this little guy will lose it all and need/qualify for every therapy under the sun." It is going to be WICKED ya'll.. but it's the last international adoption of a young-ish person. Ted has the education, the insurance, and the income to ensure this kid will get everything he needs. We already know how to navigate the special needs systems of KC. I will always be home and I will advocate.

We raised our hands to be what we have always prayed to be and that is that we will "show up, on time, and equipped" for what God asked of us. After a year of sitting on the WC list, it was clear that no one else was coming.. let alone someone who had already turned in paperwork and was committed to what was to come.

I still remember looking in the mirror, taking some deep breaths, and reminding myself that this child may never get better. His brothers may be making his life choices for him if his brain doesn't heal. We may be never be able to go to normal family gatherings or vacations if his needs are severe.. not only were we confronted with a choice that could drastically change the dynamics of our family forever.. but we aren't doing it for free. His fees are the same as my other "normal healthy" individuals.

WHO DOES THAT??!! Apparently us... and what did God do for me?.. when I wasn't "perfect" and I was in my mess and a circumstance. He didn't wait until I was within the bounds of what normal people easily love (normal, healthy, controllable little ones). He got in and got His hands dirty and He works with me. We do life together.

Finally, On MARCH 10th, 2014 we got our "YES" from our agency and our referral immediately the next day. We are about to have "twin" Ethiopian boys.. with about a 30lb weight difference at this point.... His estimated birth date is fall of 2009 (6 months different than Ben on paper) but we will be advocating to have it changed. He is so tiny and so delayed and it was such a guess to begin with.. we want him same age or a teeny bit younger than Ben.

I wish I could post pictures here, but if you remember with Ben's adoption that that is a "no no" in Ethiopian process until you're all done. Sigh. I know.. but I can show them to you elsewhere if you haven't already seen :-)

Trenton Eskedar Sibley, currently 4 1/2 years old and hanging tight at 29lbs in Ethiopia will hopefully be coming home late fall 2014 or early spring 2015.

So why did we wait until today of all days to "go public" with this information? A little thing called PAIR.

This stands for Pre-Adoption Immigration Review. After all of the drama in Ethiopia a few years back.. where people would clear the Ethiopian portion of the process and be submitted to the united States Embassy for their visa to be issued.. well it happened that the USA would investigate cases, find fraud, and then that family loses their child because a visa would not be granted to the USA. As of last summer, the United States launches an investigation BEFORE all of this happens. They require a stack of documents now from the birth region to be submitted before they start their investigation. The problem last summer, was that all of these things were very new to Ethiopians.. and Trent was born directly on the border of Sudan where things are extremely unstable.. and the the roads are washed out.. and there is pretty much no electricity let alone internet. We knew when we said "yes" to Trent, that we could be waiting for these required documents to be completed for a really long time. Some families that got referrals last August didn't even get to this point until Jan and Feb of this year!! Some of them 6-8 months after referral where their case went absolutely nowhere. We didn't want to go through that publically. We decided that we would wait to share it with the world until we had that stack of papers in our hot little hands.

AND WE DO :-)

Last night looked something like this:



Our PAIR documents came through yesterday.I jumped up and down in my living room. We processed them last night, and our I600 and supporting documents are now on the way to the lockbox in Texas. From here he is "on the grid" with immigration. Local immigration will comb through it. They will likely want something redone or extra evidence submitted (called the dreaded "RFE" for Request for Evidence). We don't want that, but about 75% of people get them. Then once we get that fixed and they are happy, everything is sent to the embassy in Ethiopia where the US Embassy launches their investigation and re-interviews everybody to make sure things are legit. When we get notice that the investigation is complete, we will have A GIANT HUGE MASSIVE PARTY because that means our PAIR letter is on the way. That gets authenticated in DC and sent directly to Ethiopia to be combined with our other papers and presented to Ethiopian court.. then they invite us to travel as the last piece of the evidence for Ethiopia. We pass court. We come home for about a month while they run around getting all of his new Sibley documentation done.. and then we are back on the plane for the pick up :-)

As you can see, we still have a lot of hoops to jump through.. but we have just gotten PAIR documentation in 3 months time and that was one of the biggest wildcards we didn't know wouldn't cause us to be still be in the same place months and months from now.

We love you little Trenton Eskedar.

PS if you are on our Sibley mailing list, you will be getting a magnet with his face and info on it so you can pray for him every time you open your fridge!!!

***** Okay back to live time. Documents were received 6/18 at the TX lockbox and we are waiting our officer on the case to begin his investigation. Pray that all will be well, and if it isn't, that it will be easily fixable. Until we hear more, we hang tight and we pray for his health and his development. We will be there as soon as we can little man. Godspeed.