"What Happened?!"

So some of you are wondering "what happened??!?" I apologize that my last post was hastily written- I was in a time-crunch, but wanted to get the information out so people could start praying as soon as possible.  Thank you for your prayers.  Please don't stop!

Here's the deal...  I can't share what exactly happened because the information is very personal to our daughter.  However, I can give an example from a different case that happened several months back.

The example:

A relative of the child told the child's birth-mom to testify that the birth-father had died.  So, the birth-mom testified, had witnesses, and even had a fake death certificate.  All the local, regional, and national paperwork was certified to show that the birth-father had "deceased".  However, this was not true.  During the US Embassy interview (an intensive interview where they verify information previously given), the birth-mom came clean and admitted that the birth-father was still living, but had abandoned the family.  She did not know where he was.  So, all the paperwork had to be re-done to reflect the birth-father's "disappearance" instead of "decease".  This took about 3 months because of the quantity and depth of the work, as well as the search for the birth-father.

Again, this is not our specific situation, but it gives the general idea behind what we're up against.  I do not know if the new information will take weeks or months to update.

We are not doing super-great, actually, with this new development.  Please hear me: we'll be fine.  We still trust God.  It's just that our emotions are in a little bit of a jumble.  If one more person pats me on the hand and says "you just need to trust God, sweetie" I just might scream at them.  But, really, we'll be fine.  The thing that bites the most is that Wednesday was supposed to be the last step of the process, and at this exact moment in time, we were supposed to be cleared to travel.  We are supposed to have plane tickets in hand to leave in the next week to go get my children.  This time next week, they are supposed to be in our arms, screaming and peeing.  They won't be.  It pretty much stinks.  AND, I may miss my daughter's first birthday.  Double stink.

So, in the mean time, we plug away at life and enjoy the time we have together.  Philip is busy with church, work, and training a new employee, and I'm busy with class and the home and friends and volunteer work.

Please do continue to pray.  Our agency is doing a great job sorting stuff out, and all parties involved are wanting to get this adoption finished.  I am confident that our lawyer and those in Ethiopia will be diligent to update everything as soon as they can.  We'll keep y'all updated as we know more.