This morning, I called our agency because I was REALLY FRUSTRATED with not knowing what happened on July 15th when our case was supposed to be appealed. I had to leave a message and while I was waiting for a return call, I received an e-mail about court closures. Courts are closing from Aug. 22 - Sept. 30 until possibly Oct. 6. Well, right after I got the e-mail, my phone rang and it was the court person at America World. Finally, I got some answers! She said that the in-country staff has been appealing our case consistently since July 15 in an attempt to get a date but have been unsuccessful. The reasoning was that the court personnel have been trying to decide when they were going to close and needed to make sure that the staff had time to actually hear all the cases that have already been assigned dates. This morning, the courts confirmed with the in-country staff that they will be closing and also assigned our family a court date of October 7. Due to the nature of our case and all that our family has gone through, the courts have been gracious enough to recognize that and in turn assign us a date for as soon as they reopen. Our agency contact stated that due to the date that our family was assigned, that they are anticipating that the courts will not reopen until October 6. So maybe this info will help some of you out there are who are waiting for dates too.
As for us, I am breathing a sigh of relief. I am disappointed that we are not traveling soon but at the same time, I am glad to have some answers and a target date. In the meantime, I have requested that AWA keep us up-to-date on Baby Girl's health as we do not want to get a call out of the blue like we did with Ashure. I have been promised that the staff will keep us updated, so I hope that happens.
In the meantime, we are going to get re-fingerprinted for the 3rd time. I have been getting antsy about our fingerprints because they expire the first week of September, so now we will have time to renew them as well as make sure that the renewal makes it to Ethiopia prior to our travel (paperwork is sent to ET by the US gov't and we all know how efficient our gov't can be at times). Several families have gotten to ET only to find that their fingerprint renewal paperwork hadn't arrived at the Embassy yet, so we have a plan worked-out with AWA to ensure that this doesn't happen to us and the extra wait time increases our chances of a smooth ride through the Embassy. It's all in God's timing.
Please continue to pray for Baby Girl's health. Families traveling in the weeks to come, we hope that some of you will agree to take pics and packages to our little angel!
