I really have no news to share with you. I am back to feeling the way I did pre-referral. Waiting for an e-mail that at least gives us a court #. I am tired, frustrated, weary and nervous. It's been more than 2 months since our referral. UGH!!! A couple of delays and we are still waiting. First, in January we needed to get our birth and marriage certificates notarized. These then had to be sent off to the government and we would get a new Statutory Declaration (SD). We then received our referral Feb 8th. Our SD did not get back from the gov. until Mar. 4th . That was then sent to Ethiopia and had to be translated first. (I don't think they file for a court date until that was all there). We then had a small glitch in one of our documents (luckily no new SD). That set us back a few weeks. When I talked to Imagine a few weeks ago they had said that they were just then filing our papers for a court date. UGH!!! So now we wait.
I'm not sure how long this will take. There have been some major delays in Ethiopia with them moving to do just 5 adoptions per day. It's rumoured that this could delay each adoption by a year. A whole year in the life of a child in an orphanage is a huge deal. Our little guy has already spent 6 months in an orphange. By the time we bring him home he will be out of the age range that we are approved of by the Ont. gov. ( in Ontario you have to be approved for a child that will be a certain age when you bring them home - not at referral). My biggest concern is the amount of time he will have spent in an orphanage when he could have been in our home with his family.
God has given me so much peace. Unfortunately this week I've started letting my worries choke out the peace. Pray that I can learn to lean on Him again. I hate feeling this way. I hate that this is all consuming. I hate these helpless feelings I have. I hate the wait.
