The Call That We Had Been Waiting For

I am not going to lie, when I answered my cell phone and it was our adoption worker on the phone, I thought she was calling to give bad news. I thought she is trying to soften the blow and that is why she is calling. It never occurred to me that she would share news that would change our lives. Literally.

Since we started our adoption journey, what I like to call adoptwaiting, we really felt led to pursue international adoption. We have gone from international adoption to domestic adoption and back to international adoption again (click here to read that post.)

Adopting siblings, brothers or sisters or brother and a sister, is something that we have always hoped to be able to do. Because of that we were open to and assumed that adopting siblings meant that we would be adopting children who were older, most likely over the age of 3. Because there are sometimes less people waiting for older children, children who become available who fall in this category are put on our agency waiting children list, which is not open for public viewing. I became a stalker of this list.

I received our adoption agency’s waiting children email and our adoption worker asked if we would be interested in the sibling group on there. I shared the information with Jeff and we decided to move forward. We told her we were interested and would like to be considered for this group. Our agency’s international team prays when matching children. They focus not on finding families, children but finding families for children. They would not be making a decision until January 12 that was little over a week.

I thought no problem with a known end date waiting to hear until January 12 would be no problem. January 12 came and went no news. I even emailed our adoption worker and did not get a response. At 5 p.m. I was a little defeated. I, ever the lamenter, went home and whined. Really??!! After all I have learned about waiting and I do this highly unattractive behavior? Yes, it’s true I did. January 13 is a new day and I am sure we will hear something today, I thought. Nothing at 9:30 am, I never knew one could check their email that much in one day as I did that day. 10:30 am, 11:30 am finally an email, our adoption worker responded to my email and she did not know anything. But at least, the answer was not no.

When my phone rang at 11:57 am, it was a 708 area code, as I said, “Hello” my brain thought our adoption agency is in a 708 area code. Our adoption worker identified herself and as I said in the beginning I thought she was calling to give bad news. But that is not the case. She said we were chosen and that we were matched with the boys! I of course, responded with “Are you serious?” She said, “Yes!” Jeff and I are/will be parents to two precious boys ages 5.5 and almost 2.

What does this mean? It means that we need our I-171 from immigration. We are praying that we can be matched with an officer at the immigration office, that they will accept my fingerprints and process our I-171 form this week. Once we have that we can get our dossier state sealed. Then our agency verifies everything is correct and it gets sent to Ethiopia. That is when our match will be an official referral. Right now it is an unofficial referral. Once they have our dossier they can begin to gather the other necessary paperwork they need to submit us to court so we can get a court date. Then we travel for court, and meet our precious boys. We come home and more paperwork is processed. We get an embassy date and that is when we go back and get the boys and bring them home forever!

As a new friend who has just returned with her children from Ethiopia said, now the waiting begins…………