Help Father. I need You now.

This morning I open facebook and read another one of our adoption buddies updates. As I read my heart and soul went cold. It seems they have an expired document ( on March 9th) and our court date is suppose to be the 10th. We pray they are allowed to pass anyway since it is so close.

Something that is very close to my heart since I went through our own docs this week and found that we had the 2006, 2007, and 2008 tax returns not 2009. The 2008 would be 2 + years and all docs should be less than 2 years. Now I don't know if this is a document that would affect us or not haven't heard back from my agency yet. I don't think it is but anything at this point sends a chill through you. Any delay in our case at all will result in a year + process to bring our boy home it seems.
You see the MOWCY(ministry of women and childrens affairs) has set the date for the decrease of 50+ letters to only 5 on March 10th. A day before our court date. If we do not pass on the 11th the wait will increase dramatically until we can get M home.

Here is a copy of the newspaper . This coupled with the looming US government shut down at embassy is not good news for anyone in the adoption process in Ethiopia and especially not the children it affects.

"Ethiopia is cutting back by as much as 90 percent the number of inter-country adoptions it will allow, as part of an effort to clean up a system rife with fraud and corruption. Adoption agencies and children's advocates are concerned the cutbacks will leave many Ethiopian orphans without the last-resort option of an adoptive home abroad.

Ethiopia's Ministry of Women's, Children's and Youth Affairs has issued a directive saying it will process a maximum of five inter-country adoptions a day, effective March 10. Currently, the ministry is processing up to 50 cases a day, about half of them to the United States.

A copy of the directive provided to VOA says the reduction of up to 90 percent in cases will allow closer scrutiny of documents used to verify a child's orphan status.

Ministry spokesman Abiy Ephrem says the action was taken in response to indications of widespread fraud in the adoption process.

"What we have seen so far has been some illegal practices. There is an abuse. There are some cases that are illegal. So these directives will pave the way to come up with [safeguards]," said Abiy Ephrem.

Investigations have turned up evidence of unscrupulous operators in some cases tricking Ethiopian parents to give up their children, then falsifying documents in order claim a part of the large fees involved in inter country adoptions.

American couples often pay more than $20,000 to adopt an Ethiopian child. Such amounts are an enormous temptation in a country where the average family earns a few hundred dollars a month.

U.S. State Department statistics show more than 2,500 Ethiopian orphans went to the United States last year. That is more than a ten fold increase over the past few years, making Ethiopia the second most popular destination for Americans seeking to adopt overseas, after China.

Child protection professionals generally welcomed efforts to clean up the system.

Some, however, questioned the motive behind the cutback. One adoption agency representative who asked not to be identified called the policy "ridiculous", and said it appears to be in retaliation for recent criticism of the government's lax oversight of the process.

Abigail Rupp, head of the consular section at the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa says the cutback is likely to result in a drop in adoptions to the United States from last year's 2,500 to fewer than 500. She says the biggest concern is for the estimated 1,000 children currently in the adoptions pipeline, who may be forced to wait more than a year for their cases to be considered.

"We share the government's concerns about the vulnerabilities in the process. But certainly we have concerns about children who would be waiting longer for their adoptions to be final. That would mean they would be in an orphanage or transition home for a longer period of time," she said.

Rupp said adoption agencies in Ethiopia should take the directive as a cue to be accountable for each case they bring forward, including knowing exactly how children in orphanages came to be there. She said government officials have indicated they may close as many as 45 orphanages as part of the effort to clean up what critics have labeled a "baby business".

Ted Chaiban, head of the Addis Ababa office of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, called the new rules "an important step" in rooting out irregularities in the system and finding family-based local solutions for what the government estimates are 5 million Ethiopian orphans.

"What is important is that any child deemed to require care be looked at in terms of a range of options starting from family reunification all the way through inter country adoption. In that respect the work being done by the ministry needs to be strengthened and supported," he said.

U.S. Embassy officials late Friday indicated they are posting an adoption alert on the State Department's website addressing the concerns of Americans who will be affected by the Ethiopian government directive. The alert can be seen at www.adoptions.state.gov."

My spirit is broken yet again. My heart has never felt this much hurt. I know if I look into Biblical history our wait is just a drop in times bucket. But it feels like an eternity for us. Please pray that we pass on the 11th and can bring our son home sooner rather than later. We will wait to bring him home as long as it takes. But the pain is sometimes to much to for me to handle on my own. And that is sometimes how I feel On my own. I know thousands of people are going through this same process and feel the same hurt and longing as we do but I still feel tramped on this island by myself.

Please pray for everyone involved in this Ethiopian process and especially for us to all have peace and strength to look to HIM during these times of trail. And the children this will affect. That they will be taken care of while we wait to get them home.