(Tim) Our eldest son, Joseph, and his wife, Heidi (see pic), are in the late stages of adopting a child from Ethiopia. This coming Monday, the Ethiopian court will act in their case, Lord willing, after which they may be free May 16th to travel to pick up their little boy. As longtime readers will remember, Doug and Heather Ummel (Heather is our firstborn) have a son, Josiah, who was adopted from Ethiopia a couple years ago.
Here's a pic of Josiah, along with some helpful adoption resources.
Would you please keep Joseph and Heidi, and the Ethiopian authorities, in your prayers? And if you're interested, here's the blog where Joseph and Heidi update us on their son's entry into God's Covenant Community. Here's Heidi's latest update...
Week of Prayer - Day 5
Today please pray for MOWA (Ethiopia's social services type organization). They are a very busy office and with the number of adoptions going through Ethiopia right now, they have a difficult time keeping up. There is one letter in particular that needs to be written by them for our court case. Many times this is written the day of the court date, so if anything goes wrong, it causes a delay. Pray that the letter would be written on time and correctly. Also pray for MOWA as they increase staffing and computer equipment to keep up with the increasing demands of time.
Also pray for our son's original orphanage. They will need to submit his original paperwork and information. They are not located in the capital city, so pray that everything makes it to court on Monday (Monday is SO soon!!!).
God has brought me back to being in submission and dependance on Him in this whole process through the fingerprint update glitch. A praise that yesterday I was able to talk with people at the National Visa Center, who actually were very helpful AND called me back after looking into our case. I also FINALLY figured out how to talk to a real, live person at the USCIS office in Indianapolis! It only took me a year to figure that one out, but I realized that all the emails from them had a name at the bottom, so I went from the automated voice menu to the directory to enter someone's name in and Voila! a real, live person answered the phone! If you want info, just email me and I'd be happy to share :-)
What has been going on with our fingerprint update is that the NVC (National Visa Center) began uploading updates instead of emailing them to the Embassy in Addis. The Embassy did not know this and were still looking for emails, not knowing they had to go to another site and download the updates. The NVC assured me that our updates are uploaded and ready for them to download the information. Our agency rep. is quite confident that the NVC and Embassy will communicate and get this figured out by Monday. Apparently there are a number of families who are in the same boat and they are taking care of it. So, praise God!! Mostly I'm so thankful I was able to get through to people on the phone. I don't always have internet at home, so that was very helpful!
Keep praying!!! This is the last business day before our court date! Wooohoooo!!!!
