In Our Arms Forever!!!

This morning we left our guesthouse at around 9 AM to head to visiting hours at Nati’s orphanage. We still did not know if we would be able to take custody of him today because we did not know if the translation office was open. At around 10:30 we received a call from our agency rep that she had been able to get the translated document and that we could take Nati at the end of visiting hours. We would just need to come by the office to get a copy of the court decree. I cannot even explain how excited we were to know we would not have to leave him another night.

We spent the next couple of hours eating cookies with the kids at his orphanage, playing in his familiar space with his friends and taking pictures. About 30 minutes before it was time to go we pulled out the outfit and new shoes we had brought to change him into before we left. I had prepared myself for some tears but instead he was all smiles. He walked around the orphanage showing all of the nannies who told him how handsome he was, how much they loved him and that they would see him later. I felt like I was the only one holding back tears. The nannies and older kids all smiled bravely and waved and cheered him right out the gate and into our car.

This was not the final goodbye. We will go back on Monday for a farewell ceremony. Yet still, it will never be the same. The nannies that have tucked him in at night, fed him, changed him, cared for him and loved him for the last several years have now handed the privilege off to us and there is something so bittersweet about that. How do you adequately thank someone for doing that for your son. I am still not sure I know but I do know that I will be eternally grateful for the way they cared for and loved my son knowing the loss that would be coming at the end.   

So at approximately 1:15 today Nati stepped out of the orphanage compound and his life changed forever. Of course, he is unaware of all the changes still coming but he has handled today so much better than we could have expected. He smiled, waved and yelled "chow" as we walked out of his old life. He took in all the sights of the city nestled between Brandon and I and eventually climbed up on my lap.

We know this is the honeymoon stage but man is this kid awesome. Today, he has let us hold him, feed him, bathe him, play with him, cuddle him and eventually tonight he climbed up in my arms and let me rock him to sleep. What a brave boy to allow us to do all these things already. That is exactly what I told him today even though he could not possibly understand what I was saying. I told him how long we have waited for this moment, that we love him and always will and that he is such a brave boy that we are proud to call our son.

While this is the most monumental part of this process to date there were other exciting things that also happened today. Before I can come home with Nati there are so many other things that need to happen. When we arrived at the office today to pick up his court decree we were told that MOWA had issued the 3 letter needed, the Birth Certificate had already been issued and that we were going to file for Nati’s passport this afternoon. We did file for it and it will be ready to pick up on Monday morning!!!

I know for those of you outside the adoption community this might not seem like that big of a deal. Let me tell you it is nothing short of a MIRACLE. We will book our medical appointment for the embassy on Monday. After we find out the medical appointment date we will have a pretty good idea of when I can come home. God is so good. We continue to stand in awe of the fact that he has chosen us to parent this boy who is fearfully and wonderfully made. He is so good and his plans are better than we could have ever imagined. 

It's Official!!!

We left our guesthouse at 7:30 this morning to head to court. We barely made it there for our 9AM time slot. After rushing into the building and up several flights of stairs we entered a room filled with other adoptive families nervously waiting to go before the judge. 

We were so nervous. 

While we had been told by so many others that it would go quickly and was not something to be nervous about we were still holding our breath. It was such a monumental moment at the end of this crazy journey to make Nati our son.

After watching 4 other families go into the room and come out our name was called. We, along with our agency rep, went into a small room, handed over our passports to verify our identity and answered 9 questions.

Do you have other children?  “Yes”

How many? “4”

Are they excited about your adoption? “Yes”

How long have you pursued Nati, specifically? “19 months”

Have you met him? “Yes”

How many times?  “Twice”

Do you like him? “Yes”

 Do you still want him? “Yes”

Do you understand this contract is forever and cannot be reversed for any reason? “Yes”

After a few words about the importance of instilling cultural pride in Nati he announced that he was finalizing our adoption. Just like that we were excused from the room and it was over.

Exactly 3 minutes after we entered the room.

It felt so surreal and anti climatic after the battle we have been in for the past year and a half but we are so thankful to have this behind us. Today the government of Ethiopia recognized what we have known for quite a while. Nati is our son, FOREVER. <3

We waited at the court house for 2 more hours and walked away with our court decree in hand. This is our first answer to prayer. The judges are allowed 1-3 days to grant the decree after finalizing the adoption. Ours did it on the same day. This will allow us to apply for the next needed documents tomorrow instead of waiting for next week. One day does not seem like that big of a difference but in the chain of events that needs to happen each day counts. 

Unfortunately, the translation office was closed today so we were not able to obtain the translated copy, which means that we did not get to take custody of our little man. However, we are very hopeful that we have left him at the orphanage for the last time and that we will get to take custody tomorrow.

Please pray for him as he makes this transition. I know that while it is pure joy for us it will involve loss for him. We are so excited to not only be spending a few hours each day with him but to be spending each precious moment we can.

Natanim Solomon Trumble is an orphan no more…He is FINALLY our son!!!

FYI- We were hoping this post would be accompanied by adorable pictures of our little guy but our agency has requested we wait to post pictures until we have the court decree in hand. Hopefully just one more day of waiting! ;)  

Our First Few Days

Wow, the last couple of days have been crazy. I know all of you have been patiently but anxiously waiting for an update so I am going to try my best to keep it short but let you all in on our first few days in Ethiopia.

On Sunday Morning at 5:30 AM we left our house to head to STL to catch our first flight. There was crazy rain and storms happening and our first flight was delayed about 30 minutes. We were in the air for about 2 hours and had a pretty smooth flight. Arrived in DC at around 2:30 and by 4 pm we were in our hotel room. We were blessed to be able to meet up with friends for dinner. Came back. Went to bed. Overslept slightly. Ate our last American breakfast and boarded our flight.

Our flight to Addis was LONG!!!! I mean obviously a 13 hour flight is long but, seriously, it was really long. We knew that as soon as our flight landed we would be meeting our boy within hours and the excitement was overwhelming. I did not sleep for one minute the entire flight which was bad because we were just starting our first day in Addis whenever we landed.

We landed in Addis. Had our temperature taken to make sure we were not sick. Stood in a line to pay for our visas. stood in a line to go through security. Stood in a line to get our luggage. Then we began looking for our driver. First, let me say that we normally would have received several emails from our agency explaining the process for this part but with only having 48 hours and it being over the weekend communication was less than optimal. Our agency sent out the email with all contact information for in country staff as well as our travel itinerary while we were flying over the Atlantic ocean. We had planned to use the airports WiFi when we landed to get the information but quickly found out the WiFi only worked phones on an Ethiopia network. We looked around the entire bottom of the Bole airport before finally asking a military police officer for help. He firmly told us we needed to go outside. As you know that is the last thing you want to do when stranded in a International airport without a phone to call anyone is walk outside. We walked outside and were told by another military policeman that we needed to go down into parking lot area to find our driver. I immediately panicked. The parking lot was full of people and it seemed like the most unsafe decision to make. Brandon stayed calm, like he usually does, and told me to stay up by the doors with our luggage while he went down. I immediately began praying protection over us and provision of our driver. About 5 minutes later Brandon returned with our driver from our guesthouse who assured us we were never in any real danger and that he was looking for us all along. We had an hour long ride to our guesthouse and I needed every minute of it for my heart rate to return to normal.

We arrived at our guesthouse, brought our luggage to the room, grabbed a few small toys and headed off to meet our son for the first time. It took another hour to get to the orphanage. We mostly rode in silence, gripping each others hand as we took in Addis for the first time and tried to keep our emotions in check. Our driver pulled up to a sheet metal door in a whole road of sheet metal doors and calmly said “we are here”. He knocked on the door and we were immediately greeted by several eager kids who wanted to be held and loved on. Nati was not one of them. Our agency representative walked up to us and said “Are you ready?” I just nodded my head. Of course we were ready. I have been longing to hold him in our arms and tell him how loved he is for 18 months. We walked into the orphanage, through one doorway and just like that he was standing in front of us smiling. The nanny scooped him up and handed him to me. I had prepared myself for him to try to resist or try to return to one of his caretakers but instead he just put his hand on my cheek, leaned in for a hug and acted like we had always been doing this. The next 3 hours were a blur. I must have kissed his face a million times and whispered “I love you” about as many times. We were able to hold him, cuddle him, play with him and even feed him his lunch. Then came the hard part for me, time to say good-bye until tomorrow. I knew it would be emotional for me to leave him but what I had not prepared for was the emotional response we would receive from him. He cried and my heart broke. It broke for all the times he has been left to cry without adults being available to comfort him. It broke that he was experiencing me walking away even once as he cried out to be held again. It was rough.

We returned back to the guesthouse and slept all afternoon. Woke up to eat dinner and went back to bed again. Then woke up ate breakfast and headed out to do it all over again. If possible I think the second day was even better than the first. And yes we both cried again when it was time to go.

We feel so blessed to call Nati our son and tomorrow what we have know in our hearts for a long time will become legal. At your 1 AM tomorrow we will stand before an Ethiopian judge and swear to love and protect this boy always, no matter what. 

It is going to be beautiful. There will probably be more tears. 

Then the picture overload will begin. I know you guys have all been waiting for the pictures of him in our arms but these words will have to do for now. We cannot wait to share pictures of the 3 of us together but we cannot publicly do that until the Ethiopian court grants us custody. When we can share you better watch out. We cannot wait to shout to the world that Nati Solomon is ours. 

That he was chosen, wanted, loved and fought for by not only his family but by His creator.

We Are Coming For You!!!

Ok, you know that if I am updating more than once in one month it is with BIG news!!!!

 In our last post we were so excited to share how God had moved mountains to accomplish what could have taken 2 months but only took 2 weeks. This gave us more hope that we *might* be able to receive MOWA approval before rainy season closure. We were given a date of July 24th, yesterday, as a deadline for MOWA to review our case and give us a positive or negative comment. Let me be clear there are many times these dates come and go with no comment from MOWA. There are perhaps even more times that the comments are negative. Requesting updated Dossier documents, additional evidence in the child's case or any number of other reasons for another delay. While many people began to speculate that this could mean we could possibly travel before closure we just didn't think it would happen.  As our agency rep told us "Do not get your hopes up.".

It would take a miracle!!!

We would receive our first miracle just 4 days later when Nati would receive a positive comment, from MOWA, 2 weeks BEFORE the deadline for them to review his case. At this point we began praying for a court date to be issued before rainy season closure but we still held this information back because it still seemed unlikely. As that week came to an end with no news our hopes dwindled even more. We were told we would probably know by Monday and then by Wednesday and then hopefully by Friday. We were feeling pretty discouraged by the time Friday morning rolled around. 

However, on Friday morning I received the call we had been waiting for. Nati had a court date for this coming Thursday. When taking into account the need to be in country a couple days before court and a needing a few days to get there it did not leave much time. We immediately called our travel agent and asked her to start looking at flights. We called our guesthouses of choice. We told our kids. We told our friends and family. And just 48 hours after receiving that call we will be on our first flight. We are flying out of St. Louis at 10:57 in the morning. We will land in DC by 2 pm where we will get to rest a little and meet up with friends for dinner. And then on Monday morning at 11AM we will take off on the LONG flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We will land in Ethiopia at around 7:15AM local time (We will be 8 hours ahead of you guys) and will hopefully be holding Nati in our arms for the first time just a few hours later. The tears are definitely flowing as I type that. It feels like we have labored for forever to get to this point and yet just like that the wait is over. 

God is Able. He is Faithful. He is Good. 

Would you please cover our entire family in prayer? We are so thankful to know that we have so many interceding for us and our children. Please pray specifically for safe/smooth travel. That our family would stay healthy. That Nati's case will be wrapped up and his visa issued quickly. Pray for the four little hearts at home that are working hard to understand what is coming. We had tears from all 3 girls tonight as we said goodbye...there were a few from Momma too. It is so hard when we cannot give them a day I will for sure be back home. As always please pray for Nati. Pray for that little man's heart. that it would be open to the love of a family. That God would be protecting him as he has big changes coming that he can not possibly understand. As always this is a time to remember that adoption always involves loss. While our little man will be gaining so much next week he will also be losing again and that is just too painful for me to ignore. He will be losing his caregivers from the last several years, close friends that honestly are more like siblings and the loss of all things familiar. Please pray for him and for us to have wisdom to know how to make the transition a bit less painful. 

I am hoping to be able to keep you guys updated as much as possible through this blog while I am gone. 

We cannot wait until we can share pictures of Nati finally in our arms!!!

Good Update!!!

Ok, friends another month has passed on this crazy journey but so much has happened since my last post. I am going to try to hold in my excitement so that I can share everything that has happened in order.

In my last post I let you know that the embassy had requested an interview in order to complete their investigation and man were we discouraged. We woke up to an email on June 8th letting us know that the embassy had officially requested an interview. These usually require a bit of time to set up as communication has to happen several times to set the date. However, by June 9th we had a court date set for less than a week later, June 15th.

If that date sounds familiar it is because I had asked you guys to unashamedly storm the throne on Nati's behalf that day. It was his 4th birthday and we were so heartbroken to be missing it. Isn't it amazing how God orchestrates things to happen in perfect timing. We woke up on the 16th to another email from the embassy. This time it said that our I-604 investigation was completed and that our documents were being sent back to our immigration officer at USCIS for a determination on our case. We were told it could take 20 business days to receive any response from our officer on our case. However, we had our PAIR letter in hand just 3 days later on June 19th. We were able to overnight it to DC, for federal authentication, on June 22nd. Just 2 weeks after our request for an interview.

If you are reading this in total shock then you are reading it right! 

Scheduling the interview alone could have taken a month. Receiving approval/denial from our immigration officer could have cost us another month. What could have taken 2 months only took 2 WEEKS!!! We know that this was only accomplished by God's power and His moving mountains on behalf of Nati and we are so thankful for every prayer that has been lifted on our family's behalf.

So, our PAIR letter was held up in DC a little bit longer then expected but it did arrive in Ethiopia this morning. By this afternoon we learned that we had been given a FFIC date of July 24th. Our FFIC date is actually more of a deadline for MOWA to give us a positive or negative recommendation. Let me be clear it is usually negative. Sometimes it is negative many times before it is positive but we are so thankful to be starting this last step before we can finally hold our boy in our arms. We need you to pray fervently that God would place favor on Nati's case and those it comes before. That they would not pick our dossier apart or request information that is hard to obtain, but that they would pass Nati's case through with an approval very, very soon. The courts will close exactly 2 weeks after this date, on August 7th, for rainy season and it will be mid to late October before they are open for us to try again.

Pray, Pray, Pray Friends!!!

We also received 2 updates this week through our agency that included 14 pictures of our boy! As always we have looked at them a million times over soaking up every smile and report of growth. One update showed him receiving his birthday bag we sent last month. He was even wearing the outfit we sent even though it was a little big. I wish we could share them all with you. He is absolutely precious.

And because I do not want it to sound like I am that annoying mom who thinks her son is the greatest (I do) I want to share this list of attributes that was given by other people who have spent time with our boy over the last month.

-smiley

-cuddly

-loveable

-peace keeping

-good friend

-happy

-special

-sweet

-ticklish

-really good at giving hugs

-good at sharing

-beautiful

-observant

-calm

-active

-picky eater (Yes, this is a good thing to us.)

I mean, seriously, who wouldn't feel super blessed to be this little guys mom. ;)

PAIR Process Continued

I have been trying to keep this blog as updated as possible to let everyone know what progress is being made on our case and how to pray specifically. In my last post I told you that we submitted to the PAIR process on April 9th and that we received RFE's on April 30th. We were then waiting for documents to get back to us from Ethiopia to respond to the RFE's. We were able to finally do that on May 20th. Our case was then forwarded on to the Embassy portion of PAIR, just 7 days later, on May 27th. On May 29th our I-604 investigation was opened. This is an investigation by the embassy to verify all the details in Nati's file. We were so excited to see things moving so quickly in the right direction and at this point we were still praying for a lightening fast Embassy portion that would allow us to travel before rainy season to be with our little guy.

However, on June 2nd we received an email from our adoption agency reminding us that it was time for us to update our fingerprints for our immigration paperwork. I thought we had more time because they do not expire until August 5th but our agency said that it is required to submit 2 months early to give USCIS time to process. As I read her response I immediately felt tears running down my face and called Brandon. The reason for the tears was that I knew if we applied for our fingerprint appointment USCIS would not issue us our PAIR letter until after our fingerprint appointment which would likely still be a month or two away. This would force us to face what we had been trying to ignore. Nati might be spending an additional 2 months in Ethiopia without us during rainy season closure. 

I don't think I have mentioned this here and I need to. While we were waiting for our PAIR documents to be collected the first time we asked you to begin praying for our immigration officer. We didn't know at the time who that was but we were trusting that God did. All I can say is your prayers have been felt and God has provided. Our immigration officer ROCKS!!! Both times she has had our documents she has reviewed them within one week. She has talked with me on the phone and always responds to my emails within 30 minutes. She is friendly, patient and very helpful. We have been so blessed by her and are grateful that God allowed us to cross paths during this part of our process.

So of course I contacted her immediately to see what we could do to prevent this from being more of a mess then it already was. She said that she would not be able to act on our behalf until she had received the forms we needed to fill out. I had already done the math and even with paying overnight fees to get it to her quickly it would have taken an additional week to reach her desk. Thankfully she encouraged us to just attach them to an email so that she could get started as soon as possible. She also said since it was our free reprint she could attempt to just refresh them in the database which would only take 2-3 weeks instead of 1-2 months! I was so thankful for her willingness to work with us to try to race against the deadline we were facing. 

Today we woke up to an email from the the embassy in Addis. Instead of reading that our I-604 investigation was completed it said that they had determined the need to schedule a birth parent/finder interview to finish the investigation. This happens a lot. It is not a big deal in itself. 

This will just take time, more time...time that will cost us not weeks but months. 

At this point we feel like we can share with you in full confidence that it will be later this year before we travel to Ethiopia. These are hard words to type out to you and to admit to ourselves. We so desperately wanted those extra months with our boy. We have prayed hard for that everyday. We want to be clear that this is not a lack of faith in what God can do. If God chooses we completely believe that He could move mountains and make a way for us to go. It seems at this time like that is not in God's plan and we are trusting His timing. Many times during this process God has allowed circumstances to remain the same and has instead changed us. It looks like this time will be no different and rather then fighting it we are choosing to embrace it as His good and perfect will. At this point we would like to ask that you would pray that everything in our process would continue to move forward and that we would be able to travel as early as possible this Fall. 

This brings me to my final part of this post. I have saved it for last for a reason. If you do not remember anything about timetables, deadlines or anything else I wrote in this post that is ok. Above all that we would like for you to remember this...

There is a little boy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A little boy that is fearfully and wonderfully made. 

He will turn 4 next Monday. 

There will likely be no celebration or indication that it is a special day for him. He doesn't know that he has a family half way around the world that loves him like crazy and that is fighting to bring him home. To him it will be just another day. But to us it will not just be another day. It will be the second birthday we have watched pass without him home. It will mark another year of his childhood that we have missed out on. It will mark another year where he had a family but he didn't know it. On days like this the injustice of it all can be overwhelming but we know we serve a God who will not allow justice to be delayed forever and we are thankful for that.

 So on Sunday night before you go to bed we are asking you to say an extra prayer for Nati Solomon. Pray that he gets extra cuddles and kisses from his nannies. Pray that year 4 will be the year this boy comes home to his forever family. Pray that he will continue to get stronger and remain healthy. 

Pray that somehow he will know just how loved he is.

Birthday number 5 is going to be the biggest celebration you have ever seen!!! 

We have some catching up to do!!! ;)

A New Kind of Waiting

It has been a month since I updated everyone last so I thought I would write a quick post to let you know what has been going on during that time.

As I stated in the last post we were submitted to PAIR on April 9th. What this actually means is that our I-600 packet was received at the Lock Box in Texas after being overnighted. This is where we send all of our immigration paperwork to be forwarded to the adoption unit (NBC) in Lee's Summit, MO. We were told to expect 10-14 business days for it to be received at NBC. This is obviously a very frustrating wait for us as I could literally take off driving and have the paperwork to the office in a couple hours. While we overnight EVERYTHING the U.S. government uses regular mail which seems to lengthen every step of the process. With this time-frame in mind we prepared ourselves to hear nothing until the last week in April. It is also worth noting that just because your packet is received at NBC does not mean your case is being reviewed because you still have to be assigned an officer and added to their stack of cases.

On April 30th I opened the mailbox to find an envelope from USCIS. I could have cried as soon as I saw that little pink paper packet through the opening. If everything is going fine in the PAIR process you receive an email when your case is forwarded to Embassy. Getting physical documents in the mail is a sign that there is something wrong with your application that needs correction to move forward. I opened it to find that we were issued RFE's (Request For Evidence) on 9 of our documents. At first I panicked as 9 is a big number to need corrected but after reading further I was relieved to see that at least it was a simple fix for the most part. 8 of our documents were issued rejected by USCIS because they have a line down the middle from the scanner/copier at the translation office being in poor condition. This is frustrating because you can still read the documents but is fairly easy to fix it just costs us time. Remember how we waited over a year for one piece of paper (Nati's regional clearance stating he is a candidate for intercountry adoption). That was the 9th document to be rejected. USCIS was requesting that we send the original document issued in Oromiffa. The problem being that the original document was issued in Amharic. This is always how the regional clearances are issued because they are for Federal MOWA's use. The third translation is a new requirement but is essentially useless as no one at USCIS or Federal MOWA uses these translations. After talking with our agency and some friends with similar RFE's in their cases I feel like all will be fine once we submit our documents again. We do not really have a timeline for this as we once again are waiting for documents to get here from Ethiopia. While we should be pros at waiting and hitting roadblocks by now it is still hard. Each day that passes makes it more likely that we will not be able to travel for court until the rainy season is over in Ethiopia. What is costing us weeks now could cost us months of waiting later.

So, here are some specific ways you can pray for our family....

1.) Pray that the documents will be received from Ethiopia and submitted to USCIS for review as quickly as possible. Pray that ALL of the documents will be accepted and that Nati's case will be forwarded on to the embassy without further delay.

2.) Pray that if it would be God's will we would be able to travel for court before rainy season and that if it is not He would give us His strength and comfort while we wait those additional months to be with our son.

3.) Pray that if we travel before rainy season God would provide financially for the airfare. While it would be super amazing to travel for court before rainy season closure we know that airfare often skyrockets in July. Last year the tickets, which are normally $2,000, went up to over $6,000 roundtrip in July. we know that if God allows us to travel at that time He will provide but trying to budget for it is a little bit stressful at the moment.

4.) As always please pray for Nati daily. Pray that he receives kisses and cuddles and love from his caregivers. Pray that his health will remain stable and that he will continue to grow. Pray that God would be preparing his heart for the transitions he will need to make in the coming months/year.

Thank you so much for praying us through this journey.