Adoption Update: Not what we'd hoped for

I have not written much about our adoption situation since we returned from Ethiopia in July.  Here's a run down of what has happened over the last few months:

1. Our agency did investigations on two of the children that we had been able to meet while we were in Ethiopia. 
2. After receiving the results of the investigations, we accepted a referral for one of the children, an eight mo. old girl.
3. We had to re-do our dossier. Our first one was about to expire. (Dossiers are good for 2 yrs in Ethiopia.) This took about 6 weeks.
4. We found out in early September that we had been assigned a court date of Nov. 15th.  In early October, we booked our flights.
5. We told our parents about our travel plans on 10/30, but those plans were going to unravel 5 days later.
6. Last Friday while I was at work, James called me and said our social worker wanted to have a conference call with us.  I was tied up and could not talk, so I asked James to talk with her. I expected that the news would not be good, and feared that it had something to do with the birthmom's court appearance, which had taken place earlier that day.
7. I called James when I was able to, and my fears were correct. The birthmom testified that she wished to parent the child who had been referred to us. Our fourth failed referral.
8. Yesterday we informed our agency that we want to withdraw from the Ethiopia program. We are considering pursuing domestic adoption, but we have not made any firm decisions in that regard yet.

James and I have been put through an emotional hell this past year. I did not want to go to church on Sunday. It was Orphan Sunday, and I was not up to hearing people sing the praises of adoption. So, we stayed home. I feel like God has been playing a game with us. There have been so many things that have happened along the way that made us feel encouraged to adopt from Ethiopia. Such us:

• Learning that James and my birthdays both fall on Ethiopian holidays.
• Our original dossier got hung up at our agency's office and was sent to Ethiopia about a month later than it should have been sent. It was sent on March 5, 2010 - which was the birthdate of the first baby who was referred to us. (She passed away less than three months after we received the referral for her.)
• Learning that we have a neighbor who does works in Ethiopia and travels there once or twice a year.

I don't know why God put the desire to adopt from Ethiopia in our heart if He knew that He had no plans to fulfill that desire. All I can say about that are that His ways are not our ways.

We learned several things along the way about the adoption process that I wish we'd known before we got heavily involved with the program:

•  Most of the children available for adoption are not orphans in the way that we think. Most of them have one birth parent living. I know this is not true of every child, but it is true of most. All four children who were referred to us had a living mother, and I know of many families who have been able to meet their child's birthparent while they were in Ethiopia.
• The birthparent has the right to claim custody of the child up until their appearance in court in Addis.  This is not just a formality, and the judge will honor in the birthparent's wish to parent. The birthparent's court date is typically 1-2 weeks before the adoptive families' court date, so your travel/adoption plans may get thrown out the window a week before you were planning on leaving for court.
• There is probably no way to know your child's HIV status for sure if they are under the age of 18 months. Yes, the little babies will be tested for HIV, but the tests that are commonly used in Ethiopia for HIV are not 100% accurate in children under the age of 18 months.
• Children under the age of two year will not be screened for TB. TB is one of the most common causes of death in Ethiopia, and I was baffled to learn that kids under the age of two will not be screened for it. They will be given a chest x-ray, if they exhibit signs of respiratory illness, but in our experience TB is not accurately diagnosed. The first child we were referred died from TB, after she had been treated for pneumonia for several weeks. 
• Ethiopia does not have a good system in place to keep track of records regarding previous relinquishments by families. Let's say that a mom relinquishes a child for adoption and that child is adopted by a family in the US. Same mom gets pregnant a year later and wants to relinquish that child as well. The family in the US who has the first child has to be contacted to given the option to adopt the new sibling.  This is how we lost our third referral.

 I don't know if we would have changed our minds about adopting from Ethiopia had we known all those things, but it still would have been nice to know these things before we had spent over a year in the program.

Thank you for your prayers, condolences, and encouragement. We are not sure what our next steps will be at this time. We ask that you give us the same courtesy that you'd give someone who had four miscarriages in less than a year's time. We are not up for a lot of questions about adoption/children right now.

Google Voice: FAIL

Guess what this message was about:

Hey staff. This is bag. It's Monday afternoon. I wanna know if it's about 530 6 o'clock. But anyway, if you don't need to call me back tonight to Kathy automatic kind of we could set the Spencer's Isaac starting out the on the clock okay about automatic interest not house up to centers are so I just never the. Why so I'd appreciate it if you can work. I know I have. If you have the automatic at. If you lock and if you don't like a block and a half and we'll get some pretty soon. Just put on the networks them a call me when you can. Love you. Bye bye.

That was someone wanting to know what kind of automatic soap dispensers we use.  Google didn't catch the word "soap" even one time, and it was on the voice message several times.

Google Voice: FAIL

Another incoherent transcription from Google Voice:

Hey Stephanie, Indiana, which, I was calling. I know that totally last minute, but we decided that we might have people over. Not my we're having people over. This West card in this afternoon at 3 And I know that your E getting all but I want to tell you also that Madeline we're gonna be there so I thought I might. Sister, I'm for you guys come to you. So, anyway, give me a text or give me a call. Would love to have you guys over, talk to you later. Bye. 

So, what was this missed call about? It was an invitation to go to someone's house and watch the Cardinal's game on TV.

Daisy turned 10 this year.

In August, we celebrated 9 years with our Daisy.  She was about a year old when we brought her home from the Human Society, so we think she is about 10 years old.  She given us a few worries this year, which culminated in her having a liver biopsy early this summer.  Her liver enzymes had been running high for over a year, and we'd done a lot of testing on her.  I wrote about what tests we'd had done and finding out what she did not have here: What's ailing Daisy?

After her liver biopsy, we found out that she has a benign condition called Vacuolar Hepatopathy.  I had never heard of the disorder before.  Basically her liver cells are getting clogged up with fat and metabolic wastes. She's taking two medications for it. One is a liquid that we can squirt on her food and the other is a chewable tablet that she has to be coaxed into taking.  We are really thankful that she doesn't have a life-threatening condition. She's not had any symptoms of illness.

From her behavior, it is hard to believe that she is 10. She is still very active, and she loves to play with Lily. I still catch her dragging Lily across the floor by her tail.

Google Voice: FAIL

 Here's another jumbled up message that was transcribed by Google Voice:

HI This is a call. Call when that we surely miss phone call, from this offer and just want to see if I can answer any questions, you can call our toll free number back. At (888) ***-****. Again, this is better. Call on the the poll college, your college at (888) ***-**** sorry that we missed your call. Looking forward to speaking to you soon and have a great day. 

 I edited the call-back number that was left.  I had to listen to the voice mail to find out what this was about. I was trying to call a culinary school to order a gift-certificate for his birthday. No one aanswered when I called, and that was the message that I got when they tried to call me back.

Crock Pot Pulled Pork

I found a recipe for pulled pork on www.food.com and modified it a bit. It came out really well. We had this for dinner last night.

Ingredients

• 5 lbs pork butt or shoulder
• 2 large onions
• 1 and 1/4 cup ginger ale
• 1/2 bottle of liquid smoke
• 18 oz of your favorite barbecue sauce

Directions

• Slice one of the onions and place in crock pot.  Put the pork in the crock pot on top of the onion.
• Slice the other onion and place it on top of the pork.  Pour in the ginger ale and liquid smoke. Cover and cook on LOW for about 9 hours.
• Remove the meat, strain and save the onions. Discard all of the liquid. Using two forks, shred the meat, discarding any remaining fat or bones.
• Place the shredded meat back in the crock pot and stir in the barbecue sauce. Cook on HIGH for 30-40 minutes.
• Serve buns or rolls.

We had a lot of leftover meat, so I'm using some of them for dinner tomorrow. We are going to have build-your-own-burritos with it.

A Day at Yezelalem Minch

This post is a little overdue, but I wanted to share a few more pictures of our trip to Ethiopia.  Our last day there, we visited a ministry called Yezelalem Minch. (YM) It is an organization that facilitates child sponsorships, provides job skill training for widows and helps families with nutritional support.  On Saturdays, they have a feeding program where children and adults who are part of their ministry can receive a free, wholesome meal. Before the meal was served, James and I had some gifts to deliver to a couple of kids that are sponsored by friends of ours.

The meal is served by widows, and this is an source of income for them. They are paid by YM to prepare and serve the food.

The kids loved attention and wanted us to play with them.

I had some candy that I had brought to pass out to the kids. They all lined up after their meal for candy. This was about like starting a riot. The adults who were supervising the chaos had little sticks that they used to keep the kids in line.

All the kids wanted to see their photo after we took it. This was fun.  One perk of digital photography!

This is a wonderful organization that is changing the lives of the children and adults in it's care.