Our Story for His Glory: "Gotcha Day" Video

Click here for our "Gotcha Day" Video. Get your tissues!

What is this blog all about?

This blog was started to keep everyone informed about our adoption from Ethiopia. We prayed that it would help raise awareness of the need to care for orphans. We are now home with the most precious Ethiopian boy, Nile. We are so in love and have grown so much through this process. God has done so many miracles to get us to where we are today. If you are a first time reader you can read here to see how God lead us to adoption. We try to keep the focus of this blog on Nile's progress, information on Ethiopia, our adoption and orphan care opportunities. Click here to watch the video of our trip to Ethiopia.

Why Adopt from Ethiopia?

• One in six children die before their fifth birthday
• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old
• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition
• The median age in Ethiopia is 17.8 years
• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)
• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone, and there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia.
• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa
• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)
• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.
• Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002.
• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.
• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports.

OUR TIMELINE

Dec 07-Praying about baby #3
Jan 08- We feel God leading us towards adoption
Pray, pray, pray-research-waiting until our daughter is 18 months
June 20, 08- Mailing paper work to AWAA
July 1, 08- application approved by AWAA for Ethiopia program-Let the fun begin!
July 7th, 08- Mailing signed agreement and initial payment to AWAA
July 14th, 08-Got assigned a family coordinator and lots of paperwork.
July 23rd, 08- I have tons of paperwork done and notarized! Things I've gotten together: application letter, submitted I-600, background checks, birth certs, marriage cert, physicals, proof of employment, proof of insurance, applied for passports
Aug 1, 08- We are rocking through some paperwork! 90% of it is done! We just are waiting on our homestudy to get scheduled!
Aug 7, 08- made appt with social worker to start homestudy in 2 weeks. Got fingerprinting appointments. Working on dossier and homestudy requirements and paperwork.
Aug 15, 08- USCIS fingerprints
Aug 19, 08- first home study meeting(@ Panera)
Aug 20, 08- Second home study (@ our house)
Aug 27, 08- Clay's individual meeting with social worker
Sept 2, 08- Tracy's individual meeting with social worker(Home study done-Now we wait on the report)
Sept 25, 08- We got our finalized home study in the mail today and overnighted it to USCIS. Now we wait for the I-171!
Nov 19, 08- Finally got the I-171
Nov 20, 08- America World has our Dossier
Dec 12, 08- Dossier sent to Ethiopia (DTE!!)
Dec 18, 08- Dossier landed in Ethiopia
July 9, 09- Got a referral for a 4 week old boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aug 19, 09- Court date, we passed 1st time!!!
Sept 15, 09- Gotcha Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nov 19, 09- court date for readoption

"Gotcha Day" Video

Happy #adoptionday2017