Loaves and Fishes Part 2

Lots of great news this week!  We had our final homestudy visit on Friday.  Everything looks great and our social worker plans to have the homestudy report completed by the end of next week.  A notarized copy goes to our agency and that completes our file (which will then be sent to Ethiopia and translated).  At that point we are able to receive a referral, which means the agency presents us with all the information they have about children that match our qualifications (healthy, male/female sibs between 4-10 yrs old).  Because we have really specific qualifications, we will have to wait until kids that fit our needs come to the orphanage and we anticipated waiting a long time for a referral. 

So I emailed the agency for a few other questions this week and asked if I could see their list of waiting children.  This is a list that they keep of children at the orphanage who have complete files and are "adoptable", but no one has requested them for whatever reason.  I have seen these lists in the past and they break your heart, plus I've never seen sibling groups like we are hoping for, but I decided to ask this time.  I nearly fell out of my chair when I opened the document and found that THREE pairs of healthy brother/sister siblings in our age range came to the orphanage in November!  I was overjoyed to think that they may still be waiting for families when we can accept them as a referral and that our wait might not be long at all!  I showed Brian and his first comment was "November was a horrible month in Ethiopia."  And he was exactly right... 22 kids came to the orphanage in November and are on the waiting list for families. 

I'm really excited to think that we may be able to move forward more quickly that we had dared to hope and that our kids won't have to stay at the orphanage too long.  And I still can't get over the fact that not one, not two, but three sibling groups arrived right as we began the process (loaves and fishes, baby!).  But as Brian noted, everything about adoption is bittersweet-- our joy means someone else's sorrow.  Our excitement means someone else's disappointment.  Our family growing means that another family was decimated.  It is a sobering reality, but we are choosing to focus on the positive... the joyful hope that we have for the kids soon to be ours!