Our Little Miracle

As many of you know, we found out last night (or early this morning...depends on how technical you want to get) that Yema's case has cleared the embassy and she can come home.  That's the quick story.

Here's the extended version.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the international adoption process, before you can bring your child home you have to have a lot of government documents in order.  The most important one, at least on the US side of things, is called an I-600.  It basically says that you are capable and able to take care of a child.  It says what gender of child you are allowed to bring into the country.  It says what age the child can be.  (Don't worry, we are the ones who decide initially.  The case worker who writes up your home study makes sure you are able to take care of the child/ren you want to adopt.)  This document also says that you have been fingerprinted and don't have much of a criminal background.

The strange thing about this document is that different parts of it expire at different times.  On our I-600 the part where it says we can bring a child (boy or girl) between the ages of 0-36 months expires in September of 2012.  We were pretty sure we didn't have to worry about updating that again.  (We've had to update it once.)
The part where we are fingerprinted expires on June 12, 2012.  Yeah.  Really soon.

At the beginning of May we applied to update our fingerprints.  We really should have started at the beginning of April.  Government things take so long.  The process involves sending them a letter saying that you want to update your fingerprints.   Then 4-6 weeks later they send you a letter telling you a time and place to get your fingerprints taken.  Then you go to your appointment, they fingerprint you, and you wait another 4-6 weeks for them to update your I-600.  Oh, and you get to pay $85 apiece to do it.

As the days ticked by and Yema's case kept being investigated, we worried that our fingerprints were going to get in the way of bringing Yema home.  There really wasn't any hope of them being updated before June 12th and it just made us sick thinking that her case could be approved and she could be cleared to come home and we couldn't bring her home because of our fingerprints.

The interview with someone involved in her case was scheduled for May 29th and was supposedly, hopefully, the last thing needed before her case could be approved...or sent to Nairobi for further approval.  Typically you find out the day of the interview whether or not your case has been approved.  Ethiopia is 10 hours ahead of us (or 9, depending on day-light savings time) and so when they send us an update we get it in the middle of the night and find it in our inbox when we wake up the next morning.

We were really anxious going to bed Monday night knowing that the interview was taking place.  We fasted and prayed that Sunday that, if it was the Lord's will, the interview would go smoothly and Yema's case wouldn't need further approval.  That it would be cleared this week.

Well, Tuesday morning came and we didn't hear anything.  Wednesday morning came and still nothing.  We were starting to get worried.  When Thursday morning came with no word, we began to think that maybe it wasn't in the Lord's will to have Yema come home in June.  Maybe she was supposed to stay?  It made no sense to us, but maybe there was a good reason.  We were kind of depressed on Thursday but still had hope that however things worked out, it would be the way the Lord planned it.

In the meantime we worked hard doing all we could do to get Yema home.  We called our agency who told us to call the USCIS office and get an update on our fingerprints.  They also said it was okay to email the embassy ourselves and get an update and even tell them our situation.  I called USCIS who told me that our fingerprint appointment was scheduled for June 13th.  Great.  Zack emailed the embassy and told them our situation.  Then we waited.

Around 12:30 AM we got a response from the embassy asking us if we would review Yema's case and let them know our decision.  Also they called us "Evan".  Whaaaa?  We had a hunch they sent the email to the wrong person.  Zack emailed back to find out (and mentioned that, since they were asking, he thought they should approved the case.  Government workers have a sense of humor, right?).  At 2:00 AM they emailed back to let us know that they had sent us an email that wasn't supposed to go to us.  Hey, but at least we knew they were looking at it.  (We were so grateful that Zack wasn't able to sleep that night because if he hadn't alerted them to the fact that they sent us the email that was supposed to go to Evan, we probably would have woken up that morning with the wrong email and Evan not getting our case to review.  Then we'd have to wait over the weekend for him to review it on Monday and most likely would have missed a window to come out before June 12th. Still makes us sick to think about that.)  About an hour and a half later we got an email from them saying it was approved!

Then 10 minutes later we got another email saying that they recognized the time crunch we were in with our fingerprint date expiring soon and that we could come anytime next week for our visa interview and they would accommodate us.  (Usually they give you a few dates to choose from for your visa interview.)  

We were shocked.  Not only was Yema's case approved, but she was coming home in just a few days!  It was nothing short of a miracle in our eyes.

We know that our prayers were answered.  We know that Heavenly Father is truly mindful of our little family and orchestrating things in His own time.  We are so grateful that we get to bring our little girl home next week and are just in awe of the children Heavenly Father has placed in our care.  Truly, just in awe.   All of them are miracles.

Tune in next time for the exciting Embassy trip blogs!  I don't promise that it will be soon.  

Updates on Yema

Wherever we go people are asking us when Yema is coming home.  If people we see all the time are asking, I can't even imagine how all you internets people feel!  Ha ha.

Yema's paperwork was submitted to the US Embassy at the end of April.  Since then we've received two emails from the embassy requesting more information.  Once for a phone number of a policeman involved in Yema's case and another time for a request for interview of someone else involved in her case.  Currently that interview is supposed to take place on Tuesday, May 29th.  We're hoping and praying that that interview will be all that the embassy needs to clear Yema's case.  So, if all goes well, we could hear something positive tlhe first week of June.

In the meantime we are just waiting and waiting for our little girl to come home.  Recently a family traveled to Ethiopia for their son's court date.  He was at the same orphanage as Yema is so they were able to get some pictures of her.  They described her as very sweet and very content.  Also she is really good at getting toys from the other kids and kind of feisty.  Heh heh...  :)

Here is the latest picture of our little girl.  The crappy looking white in the background is me editing out the pictures of two other children.  You know, cuz I can't post pictures of other kids at the orphanage.
Isn't she a doll?

Ethiopia Court Trip: Day 7 Monday- Coming Home!

Ah, the flight home.  What a joy.  Like I said in my last post, we left Addis around midnightish.  They served us dinner.  Weird.  We flew to Rome.  "Yay, Rome!" you might say.  But no.  No Yay Rome.  We stopped there to refuel.  That is all.  We were there for an hour or so.  I think this is when they decided to serve breakfast.  Then we flew to Washington D.C. Dulles airport.  I think they served us breakfast again..or dinner.  I don't remember.  When you're on a flight that serves three meals, you know it's a long flight.  

We landed at 8:00 AM Eastern time.  We had about 4 hours to kill before we got our next flight so we freshened up the best we could and then had a nice, normal American breakfast.  I could still taste the eggs and onions I'd had three days ago in Addis.  I was very much looking forward to french toast and juice and regular milk.  We killed time until our flight to Detroit. 

We then flew to Detroit.  Can I just say that I'm not a fan of the place?  I just so very much wanted to go home.  The best thing there was the fountain:

And the Chili's where we split a nice big salad.  We finally got on the plane for our last flight to Salt Lake.  We were on a little hopper plane and all I can say is that I'm glad it was only a few hours.  I was so done with planes and my stomach was feeling the effects of the tiny plane.  I think Zack felt the same way.  

We landed around 7:00 PM and were met by my Dad.  He helped us get our bags and then took us home where we got to see our boys!  They were happy to see us, but Noah cried when Grandma and Grandpa left for the night.  It appears they did fine without us. :)  

We were so glad to be home and see these crazy little boys!  

How can you not miss these faces?

The next morning we put on some Ethiopian music for the boys.  Caleb is a fan.

Ethiopia Court Trip: Day 6 Sunday

Here it is our last day in Ethiopia and I haven't even shown you where we were staying.  Our room had two beds, a bathroom and a balcony.  

Here's one bed.

Here's the other.

Zack is standing at the door to the bathroom.

For some reason I didn't take a good picture of the balcony.  But here is a video I took early one morning.  If you listen closely you can hear the chanting in the background.  This went on constantly. Morning, noon, night...and even in the middle of the night.


Sunday morning we woke up early, as usual.  This time we had something to do.  We went with Abebe to a place where the locals worship.  We didn't go to a church but to a hillside on a ravine where a priest would bless people with holy water that came out of a spring.  We watched as people stood in line to go inside a little cement hut where the priest would then bless them with holy water.  Some people would fill up bottles to take the holy water to family who couldn't make it down to the spring.  Afterwards, we had Abebe take us to our church.  There are a couple of LDS branches in Addis.  We had directions to it, but I guess they weren't as explicit as they should have been and Abebe couldn't find the meeting house.  We drove around for a good 45 minutes trying to find the place.  We were pretty bummed when we couldn't find it.  That would have been a really neat experience.  When we got home we looked on lds.org and found the meetinghouse.  We were only a few blocks away from it.  Grrrrrr.  So frustrating.

After our failed church visit, we went and visited Yema for the last time.  She was as cute as ever.  Here's a video of Yema saying goodbye.



The rest of the day we just kind of waited to leave for the airport.  Our flight left at 11:00 at night and so we had a long wait.  It was kind of torture just waiting.  We took a nap.  We finished packing.  We called my parents and talked to the boys. Finally Abebe took us to the airport and we went through security, dropped off our luggage, and then ate a pizza in one of the restaurants.   We "stole" a coke bottle from the restaurant.  We bought a coke but they said we couldn't keep the bottle.  Whatevs.  We bought the coke- we bought the bottle it came in.  We took it.  We're such rebels.  We bought a few souvenirs and then just waited.  Finally we got on the plane.  We were headed home!

Ethiopia Court Trip: Day 5 Saturday

Saturday morning we went to a local church for a bazaar.  There was all sorts of handmade items to buy to benefit local charity groups.  This was our type of souvenir shopping.  The bazaar was everything Churchill Street wasn't.  Awesome things to buy that were handmade in Ethiopia. We spent most of the morning there and left with enough stuff that I was a little worried that we would be over the weight limit for our luggage on the flight home. :)  Totally worth it if it was though.  

We made plans with the director at Hilawe to come visit Yema in the afternoon.  We decided to be adventurous and take public transportation.  We walked from Oziopia down to the "bus stop" where all the little mini buses congregate and found a bus going to Lebu Mebrat, the square closest to the orphanage.   

Then we took a long walk down the road to the orphanage.  

When we got there we ended up having to wait outside in the courtyard for over an hour because no one there seemed to know we were coming and they didn't want to let us in.  Since it was a Saturday the director wasn't in.  We called Eleni from AAI who then called the director.  She finally called Hilawe and told them it was okay for us to see our daughter.  So nice of them.  I'm glad they have security, but sheesh.  We'd been there every day for a week.  You'd think they knew who we were.  Oh well.  While we waited Zack got to take some really cool pictures of the all the flowers growing in the courtyard.  

The wait was worth it to see Yema.  She's such a sweetheart.

I don't know what we did the rest of the day.   I think it involved hanging out at Oziopia and getting ready to go home the next day!  

Ethiopia Court Trip: Day 4 Friday

Friday morning we and Brian and Eva (the other couple with us) got all dressed up and ready to go to court.  We were going to be picked up at Oziopia so we all decided to wait outside the gate until our driver came.  We didn't want to be late for this appointment!  Our driver did turn out to be late in picking us up and we did make it to the court building a little bit late, but luckily that didn't seem to matter.  (As a side note, the drive took about 30 minutes and the most interesting thing to me was seeing all the different embassies from around the world.  We passed over 20 I think.)  The judge wasn't there yet so we all waiting in a room that was clearly designed for a lot of people to wait in.  It was relatively large with chairs lining the walls, floor to ceiling windows on one side, and a semi-broken flat screen TV in the corner showing something I couldn't quite make out.  We , Brian and Eva, Eleni, Temesgen (AAI's Attorney) and another lady (I forget her name) were the only ones in there for a while.  A little while later a  few more people came in.  Zack and I spent a lot of the wait time trying to remember how to say "Thank you" in Amharic.  Believe me, this was no "Gracias" or "Merci".  This word had about 7 syllables with no clear way to link them all (at least in my mind).  We have an Amharic Language App on my phone and so we listened to "Thank you" being said over and over.  I still can't say it.  Here's how it's spelled:  Ameseginalehu.  And you pronounce it something like "Ah-meh-segi-na-lew".  It's a lot easier to read how to pronounce it than to hear it being said and repeat it, in my mind.
After maybe a half hour (not sure now) Zack and I were called in to see the judge.  Everyone always talked about how the judge speaks really softly and so you have to be really quiet and listen closely to hear what she says.  There are signs in the waiting room that warn you to be quiet.  I guess once she cleared the room and cancelled the appointments for the day because everyone was being so noisy.  At least that's the rumor.  We weren't about to test it.  We walked into a little office with a desk where the judge was sitting and some chairs in front and off to the side.  Zack and I sat in front of the desk.  The judge was pretty soft-spoken.  She said our file needed another police letter (which we gave her right then) and then she asked us a few questions.  She said something like "You have no other children, correct?"  And we responded with "Oh no, we have two boys."  She checked her files and said it wasn't listed.  That's when we found out that she didn't have our updated homestudy (which we completed a year ago...).  We were worried this was going to hold things up, but instead she just asked their ages and wrote it down in our file.  She asked us questions like "Have we seen Yematawork?"  "Did we want to adopt her?"  "Did we realize that this was non-reversible, that she was our daughter forever if we adopted her?"  (Um, yes, kind of counting on that!)  She asked if we had contact with other families who had adopted from Ethiopia.  It was nice to be able to answer that one with a big yes.  She said a few other things that were really hard to hear, but I believe somewhere in there she said "She is yours."   And that was it.  We passed!  Yema was officially ours!  That technically meant that, if we wanted to, we could go get Yema from the orphanage right then.  Buuuut we couldn't leave the country.  For that we needed permission from the US Embassy.  That was the next hurdle.
But we passed and she was officially adopted!  Yay yay yay!
I have to say that being a parent of three kids at that moment was not as hard as people always say it is.  It was kind of a piece of cake.  But that may have had something to do with the fact that one was in an orphanage and the other two were back in the states with Grandma and Grandpa.  Heh heh...

After court we all went to Layla.  Zack spent some time with the resident dog, Ishi.  This dog looked for love from everyone willing to give it.

Zack was just sitting on the step when Ishi just came up next to him and stuck her head under his arm.  How can you resist that?

We got a ride to Hilawe to see Yema and take some official Evans family photos.

She looks ecstatic, right?  You should be, Yema.  You're stuck with us forever!

We only spent about 10 minutes at Hilawe since it was almost Yema's nap time.  We went back to Oziopia and went with Brian and Eva and Abebe up to Entoto Mountain.  This is one of the highest mountains in Addis.  (Addis Ababa is actually about 7,000 feet above sea level and is a pretty mountainous city.)  Entoto mountain is about 10,000 feet above sea level. There are a lot of eucalyptus trees on the mountain and a lot of women make a living by carrying giant (and I mean giant, like 3 times their size) piles of eucalyptus down the mountain on their backs.

Here's a picture of Addis from the mountain.  

We thought we had an inversion in Utah...you should see the pollution here!

At the top of the mountain is actually a village, the first church in Addis, the palace of Menelik the II and Queen Taitu, the royal couple that first conceived the city of Addis Ababa, and a museum.

 Here's our group at the top.

This was the king's dining room...I think.  I forget.  But look at the ceiling!

Here's a shot of the church.  Apparently once a year they bring the Arc of the Covenant out for the priests to see.  We asked one of the guides at the museum about that and he finally admitted that it's a replica, but that the real one was somewhere in Ethiopia and no one is permitted to see it.  I really liked the museum and learning more about Ethiopia's history.  I wasn't so jet-lagged for this one, I guess. :)

Here's a random shot of me sitting at the computer in Oziopia.  This is where we'd send emails and stuff.  We would take the computer up to our room at 5:00 AM to skype from there because sometimes Abebe would be sleeping in the living room and we didn't want to disturb him.

That night the family that runs Oziopia put on a big party.  They put out a big spread outside for dinner.

They had a fire in a fire pit and even had some dancers from the local community center come and put on a show for us.

It was really fun.  The girls who danced were really good.  Here's some video of them doing some traditional dancing that involves crazy amounts of shoulder bobbing.  I'm not sure why, but this type of dancing is hugely popular over there.


After they danced for a while they would come over to all us spectators and make us dance with them.  It was hard to say no to them so we all ended up looking like fools...er, dancing...with them for a while.  For everyone's sake I am not posting any video of us dancing.  But I will post another video of the girls and also of the front of Oziopia.  We stayed in the room at the top.

Ethiopia Court Trip: Day 3 Thursday

By the third day we have kind of a routine going in the morning.  Get up around 4:30 or 5:00, Skype with my parents and the boys, get ready for the day, eat breakfast, and then visit Yema.  Today we just played with Yema and her roommates for a couple of hours.

Here we are practicing our puckering.  The pictures really don't do her lips justice.  They are adorable little heart-shaped things and are seriously adorable.

Here she is showing Dad how to play with her rattle.

This is one of Yema's nannies.  We think she is Yema's favorite because her face always lights up when she sees her.  This nanny was hiding in the hall and then popping through the doorway to get Yema to smile.  She's our favorite nanny, too.

How cute are these two together?

While at the orphanage we were able to ask the director some questions about Yema's history.  One really important place in her history is the Lideta Orthodox Church which we knew was located somewhere in Addis.  One of our goals while in country was to visit that church.  Not only did the director know where the church was, but she gave us directions on how to get there!  She even drew us a map containing all the major intersections or roundabouts between the orphanage and the church which was helpful just in an overall orientation sense of this part of the city.  

After saying goodbye to Yema we set out to find the church.  It was actually really really easy, but for two foreigners who didn't speak the language, we thought we were pretty cool to go somewhere in the city on our own.  (At least I did.  I'm sure it was a piece of cake for Zack. :)  )

We took a bus from Lebu Mebrat square up to Mexico Square.  We knew which buses were going to Mexico square because a boy would lean out of the bus and yell "MESCO!  MESCO!"  Meaning, Mexico Square.  I think it cost us 20 cents to get there.  Once we got to Mexico Square we headed down one of the streets toward the church.  It was a little bit off the main road and though we could see it eventually, we didn't know how to get to it.  We got directions from a shop owner and found it.  

Here's Zack at what we now know was the back entrance to the church.

Here's the view behind him.  The pathway up to the church.

Here is the street we walked down to get to the church.  Note the scaffolding on the building.  Lots and lots of logs tied together.

We called Abebe and had him pick us up near the church.  I think he took us back to Oziopia.  We were supposed to go see the Silk Factory and then do some shopping, but Elena, our liaison of sorts from AAI, couldn't make it.  So we didn't get to go.  We were also supposed to go to a Jazz show/dinner thing.  We didn't get to go to that either (but I was okay with that one).  We were kind of bummed that we didn't get to see the silk factory.  I don't remember what we did the rest of the night. I think we played cards, had dinner at Oziopia and then went to bed.  The good news that night was that we learned we got an appointment with the judge for the next morning!  Woot!