Ethiopian Adoption, HIV, and the Glory of God

As most of you probably know in one form or another, Heidi and I have been in process of adopting child(ren) from Ethiopia. We began this process July of 2006 and it has been a wild, trial-filled time in our life.



August 2006 through the present

In November & December of 2006, we received 2 referrals of baby boys. This was a great joy, filled with much anticipation and the hope/expectation that within 3-4 months these kids would be in our family. 2 weeks before these boys were to go through the Ethiopian courts and legally become ours, we received devastating news that the younger boy was HIV + and the older boy was postive for Hepatitus B. After much prayer, constant tears, prayer, and more tears, we accepted the fact that we could not adopt an HIV+ baby (agency policy) and that we were not prepared to care for a child with Hep B. This was absolutely the most grueling decision of our lives, but acted in faith. We now had to wait for new referrals.

To make a longer story short(er), we had to complete all of our official paperwork, a dossier, over again. This was kind of frustrating, but we knew this is what we needed to do. We heard from our adoption agency, Christian World Adoption, that there was a potential of a biological brother (age 3) and sister (age 11 months) who were potentially available for adoption, once they received their medical information back from the necessary people involved. Then came the long, long, long wait.


HIS FAITHFUL WORKING IN OUR LIVES


We then went on a 4 month period (mid February through Mid June) of hearing no real information. The country of Ethiopia and our agency were going through a lot of changes. These have been probably the hardest 4 months of our lives. We had a lot of questioning of 'Is this the Lord's will' , 'If God wanted this to occur, why is it taking so long and so excrutiating?' Many more questions surfaced as the Lord was taking us through a heavy trial in our lives. Yet, His grace is and was fully sufficient and He caused us to focus upon His character and the beauty of the work he was doing in our own lives. One of the biggest lessons our Father has been teaching us through this process is 'that God is to be desired, pursued, loved, sought after, yearned for, more then His precious and dear gifts, in our case, an adopted child'.


UNEXPECTED & WONDERFUL

Last week, our case worker from our agency called us with an update of our adoption. She first told us that while the director of the Ethiopian division of our adoption agency was in Ethiopia, she was unable to located the whereabouts of the brother and sister who were potential referrals for us. We were somewhat expecting this news because the area where these kids were at is a new area of expansion for our adoption agency. We weren't discouraged by the news, for the Lord had been preparing us for this. She then went on to tell us some of the greatest news we could have ever received.

Young Abera, who tested positive for HIV in February, was transferred to AHOPE, and over the course of the last 4 months was retested and retested another time after that for HIV and both times tested NEGATIVE! As you might imagine, tears flowed freely as we bowed to thank the Lord for His goodness upon us and upon Abera. He is now back in the foster home of our adoption agency receiving good care and love from his nanny.

So, we are adopting Abera, whose name will be Ezra Abera Greenup, and we hope to get through the whole process within the next 2-5 months we pray. Please pray with us.

The other boy, Tariku, is at a foster home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia waiting for a family who is trained and prepared to care for him with his Hepatitis.

THE NEXT STEP

We pray daily for our soon-to-be son, and pray that we can get a court date within the next 4 weeks. The court date is when Abera will go before the Ethiopian government and they will officially 'stamp' his paperwork as legally adopted by us. Please pray this will occur before the end of July, because the Ethiopian courts close in their entirety for the months of August and September, meaning no new adoptions are processed in that time and thus, we'd have to wait until October when the courts re-open.

If our case would go to court before the end of July, we could travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to pick him up. We also have decided to adopt him alone. Though we highly doubt this will be the last time we adopt, we are getting 1 baby instead of 2...which we are ok with.

PICTURE(S) OF Ezra Abera...

We would love to post a few pictures of him, but because he is not yet legally our child, we are under fairly serious requirements not to post pictures of him until he is legally ours. BUT, the day he is our son, we will post a few pictures of him. His age is somewhere around 10 months old.

HELPFUL RESOURCE

For those interested in reading a book that gives a very detailed description of the life and plight of orphan situation because of HIV in Ethiopia, we would recommend reading...There is No Me Without You. (Though this is not a Christian author, and her perspective is not as such, it is still a helpful resource and very informative.) Thank you all for your prayers and support.