Dear Family and Friends,
We are very excited to announce that on Wednesday, January 13 we received a referral for 2 children that were available for adoption. Today (January 20) we mailed the paperwork necessary to accept the referral.
Our daughter is 15 months old and our son is 2 years old (they are not siblings... yet!). Both of their mother's are alive, but unable to care for them.
We have lots more information to share about our children, but for confidentiality reasons we are not going to email the information until they are legally ours. Please feel free to call us anytime if you want more details!
Below is some information if you are interested in hearing how it happened and what's next.
The story so far:
On Monday, January 11 I (Becca) received a call from our adoption agency letting us know that there were two boys (ages 3 and 4) that were available for adoption if we were interested. I said we would be interested in learning more about these boys. The agency told me they would send us their pictures and medical backgrounds as soon as they had them. On Wednesday afternoon, I got another call from the agency. They said that they were about to email me the information and wanted to make sure we were still interested in the children. The agency worker said that the boy was two and the girl was 15 months. In my mind I was thinking, "What happened to the boys?!?!" I didn't say anything because I was super excited about having a boy AND a girl.
I called Matt right away and told him about the children. I was on the road while we were talking. During this time, he received the email with their pictures and medical information. He opened the pictures and said, "You are going to think they are so cute!" Once I got back to the office, I looked at the pictures as well - they were beautiful! Over the next several days more information about the kids trickled in and we continued to pray about accepting the referral.
Over the weekend we went out shopping and bought the kids their first clothes. We have since taken everything out of the nursery to get ready for them. Things are coming together so fast! Today, Wednesday, January 20, we sent in the letters that say we officially accept the referral. Pending a negative HIV test for our daughter, everything should be smooth sailing from here!
What's next:
Once the agency receives our letters of acceptance and receives a negative HIV test for our daughter, they will submit us for a court date. Last fall families working with our agency were booking court dates out about 6 weeks. This was after the courts had been closed for 3 months, so we are hoping to only have to wait 4 weeks for a court appointment. The agency will go to court in Ethiopia on our behalf. If the children pass, at that point they will be legally our children and their names will be changed to have the middle name Matthew and the last name Hawks (they will still have their Ethiopian names as first names until we get them home). After they pass court, we apply for an embassy date which will be 2-8 weeks after court. This is when we go to Ethiopia (we need to be there for the Embassy date to get their Visas). We will be in Ethiopia for about 1 week.
Please continue to pray for us and our children...and even our cat (he hasn't always like kids!). Things are falling into place very quickly and we are oh-so-excited to meet our babies.
Like I said earlier, please feel free to call us if you want more details. We'd love to share with you!
We will continue to communicate over email as we have more updates.
Love,
Matt and Becca
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