Misc. Pictures of Ethiopia

St. George's Church

Historic castle in Gondor, Ethiopia

Photograph by Michael Nichols

After emerging from the steep cliffs of Ethiopia's Simen Mountains, two bachelor geladas survey the grazing grounds where these grass-eating monkeys congregate. The Simens are one of the last remaining strongholds of Theropithecus gelada—the only surviving species of its genus.

Photograph by Diego Lezama Orezzoli/CORBIS

Tisisat Falls presents an idyllic scene.

The Blue Nile crashes over the cataract in the lush forests of northwest Ethiopia.

Bale Mountains National Park

When people find out that we are adopting from Ethiopia, many automatically picture a dry, desolate land of starving orphans. For many of us, that is the only image of Ethiopia that we will ever see. I thought it would be nice for people to see pictures of some of the beautiful landscapes and historical sites that are found in Ethiopia. I tried to give credit to the photographers when possible. Although our stay will be limited primarily to Addis Ababa, we will proudly tell our little girl of her beautiful heritage!

Ethiopian Application Approved

I just heard back from the intake coordinator at America World and our Ethiopian application has been approved. We are supposed to receive our new set of contracts within the next 10 days, so we can go ahead and get started on the homestudy update and dossier. We are also going to have to take a new online class about the Hague Convention, so we'll get started on that very soon.

We still haven't heard back from our facilitator, Yuri Safanov, about when we can expect a portion of our money to be refunded. We are getting very anxious about this because his excuses aren't really adding up with other information that we have received. To top things off, our contact at America World is leaving very shortly (like within a week), so we will be dealing with a family coordinator who probably does not have a relationship with Yuri and certainly doesn't know us. We are not the only family in this situation, so please pray that this matter will be resolved this week. We are all counting on this reimbursement to help us with our Ethiopian adoptions.

Our specific prayer requests:

• Yuri will refund our money quickly
• We will be able to start on our Ethiopian dossier quickly
• The Ethiopian process will move quickly and SMOOTHLY
• For good health and protection over the "tummy mommy" who is or will be carrying our child
• For safety of our child with lots of loving people to care for her until we arrive
• For our family to be patient and not become disheartened with waiting (we should be good at this by now, but some days can be a challenge)

As always, thank you for your support and prayers! The posted comments have been very uplifting and we have thoroughly enjoyed reading the blogs!

Officially Applying to Ethiopia

Today was the day - we officially applied to America World's Ethiopian adoption program! We had to complete another application (thankfully minus the application fee) so that America World could open a brand new file for us. Opening a new file is probably a fantastic idea because I can only imagine how large the Ukraine file is after 1 1/2 years of trying to adopt from there!

We are pumped and ready to go. We've been told that the dossier process is much easier and less tedious than that required by Ukraine - yeah! I sure am glad that I have developed a friendship with the lady at the Secretary of State's office because she is sure to see more of me in the weeks to come.

We are requesting a healthy infant girl under the age of 12 months. Currently, the expected wait time is 7 to 9 months from the time that our dossier (application with supporting documents) is sent to Ethiopia. Hopefully we will be able to use some of our documents from the Ukraine process because we just redid the entire dossier in January.

We're still waiting on a portion of our money to be refunded to us from our facilitator in Ukraine, so please pray that he stands by his word and that we actually see that money sometime soon because we will need it for Ethiopia. Hopefully we will hear from him very shortly - or my agency is going to get VERY tired of my constant phone calls!

For those of you who are still following our journey after leaving Ukraine - thanks for all the prayers and support! For those of you just tuning in on our family's adoption journey, feel free to read all about how God brought us to Ethiopia by visiting http://reedukrainejourney.blogspot.com/

Let's see what God has in store for us next!