Deciphering everything you're hearing in the news...

My timing is not God's timing. This is something I am once again reminded of. We experienced a very positive example of this last week when we were matched with our child only 4 days after our dossier arrived in Ethiopia! And this week we're experiencing a whirlwind of confusion as news broke a few days ago of a major policy change regarding adoptions in Ethiopia. I have been reading and researching the past few days, and this is what I can tell you:

(from the National Council for Adoption)

At the end of February 2011, the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs (MOWA) unexpectedly issued a directive that could dramatically reduce the number of intercountry adoption cases processed by the Ministry. This directive was scheduled to go into effect on Thursday, March 10, 2011.

MOWA is a key piece in the puzzle of inter-country adoptions in Ethiopia. It is the branch of the Ethiopian government that reviews all documentation submitted by adoptive parents (as well as the dossier of each individual orphan referred for adoption). MOWA acts on behalf of the referred child to make a recommendation to the federal court of Addis Ababa for the adoption to be finalized. Before prospective adoptive parents can be cleared in court, they must have a recommendation letter from MOWA. This seems like a small thing, but the amount of children currently in the adoption process in Ethiopia is in the hundreds. And MOWA has other responsibilities aside from issues related to inter-country adoptions.

Previously, MOWA was processing up to 50 of these recommendations per day (some reports say 40). The directive issued at the end of February (we're just hearing about it this week) states that MOWA has cut back the number they will process each day to 5. This is why you're hearing the words "cut back" and "90%." They are not cutting back the amount of adoptions, so that is good news. The bad news is, this can dramatically slow down the adoption process for families and waiting children. I heard from some unofficial sources today that the number is back up to 20 a day - but I have not seen or heard that from any official source, so I'm hesitant to get my hopes up. This same source said that the additional 30 are usually failed cases anyway.

According to www.ethicanet.org,

MoWA indicated that they were taking these steps in response to an adoption program that is riddled with fraud and coercion.

(Riddled may be too strong of a word, I believe.) I've read in unofficial reports that the Ethiopian court system only wanted to handle 20 cases a day, and MOWA was submitting over that number causing a backlog in the system and many things to fall through the cracks. Apparently based on these two things, there are issues with the system, and it should be reevaluated and cleaned up. Many prospective adoptive families and families who have recently adopted from Ethiopia have said that they have failed court 3 and 4 times, and each time it was due to mistakes by MOWA - most often due to MOWA not providing the court with their letter of recommendation. I'm reading today (again, on unofficial sites) that adoptions currently in process could still receive a court date and prospective adoptive parents could travel for court and come home - but they will come home and wait on the MOWA recommendation letter and the court's finalization. This seems troubling as most parents will get to meet their child on this trip and now have to wait even longer before they can bring their child home.

There really is so much that is unknown at this point, but I have been encouraged to read that so many are advocating for a less drastic change in policy. You can read more about this issue and the action being taken by Ethiopia, the U.S., Italy, and other countries on these websites:

www.jcics.org

(PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY!)

www.adoptioncouncil.org

www.adoption.state.gov

www.ethicanet.org

(IF YOU'VE ADOPTED FROM ETHIOPIA OR HAVE RECEIVED YOUR REFERRAL, CONSIDER PARTICIPATING IN THEIR SURVEY)

It's my understanding that the US Embassy officials have a scheduled meeting with the Ministry of Women’s, Children’s and Youth Affairs for Monday, March 14, 2011. Hopefully we will know a little more then. I'll be watching the websites all day for news.

We know that this has not caught the Lord by surprise. All along He has know exactly who our child is and when we will get to bring him home. I told Ben yesterday that it's not that I don't trust Him - because I do wholeheartedly - it's just that I wish I knew what the outcome of all of this will be. We're going to continue to proceed with things as planned for the time being. There's nothing else we can do.

Please keep praying for little Abe. We hope to get news that he's in the Transition Home soon. We'll keep you updated. We covet your prayers right now - thank you for getting on your knees with us. We love you.